Behind the Scenes of The Giggle - Part Three
From Entertainment Weekly (Dec 2023 by Clark Collis):
Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies tells EW that the American actor was completely unfamiliar with the beloved science fiction series when the executive producer approached Harris about playing a villain called The Toymaker on this Saturday's final 60th anniversary special episode, "The Giggle."
"He’d never heard of it in his life, bless him," Davies says with a laugh. "I was lucky enough to work with the great man on a show called It’s a Sin, about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and working with him was such a joy. The Toymaker, he's kind of the god of games, so he shuffles cards, he does magic tricks, and all of that fits Neil Patrick Harris. If you go through agents, they often tell you to go away. I was able to send just a text saying, 'Do you fancy reading this?' He read it and literally phoned me up going, 'Let me get this right, so the Doctor’s an alien, right?' I was like, 'Oh my god, you really have never heard of Doctor Who!' But he couldn’t resist it, and he came to Cardiff, and we had the most spectacular time."
Davies explains that, "it's very hard to find the villain who can match David Tennant and Catherine Tate. To have a character who can be in danger of defeating those two is very hard to find. Sometimes on Doctor Who, you need armies of a thousand robots who could do that. This is just one person, so casting them was absolutely crucial and this becomes a pivotal event in the Doctor’s life. We needed that man, and, god, we had a glorious time. It’s so lovely working with Neil. When I text him now, [we ask], what’s our third project together? We’ve got to keep going!"
With huge thanks to all who shared set photos (including @TomWrenPhoto on Twitter)
For other posts in this set, please see the #whoBtsGiggle tag. The full episode list is [ here ]
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Murray, after watching Steve and Eddie for all of five seconds, confidently walks up to them and starts his whole spiel about pining blah blah etc etc, and like, Steve will absolutely not have that, there is no way.
So he snorts, looks at Murray down his nose, and with zero hesitation lies, tells him “We’ve been dating for a month, congrats on seeing the obvious... Or not since you couldn’t tell”
He just hopes Eddie will play along. Steve is sending him the strongest signals with his mind right now, and, just, he knows Eddie can be petty like this too (that’s why he likes him so much, and yeah Murray is a little right but fuck him so much more for it)
Eddie ‘lives for the bit and to fuck with people’ Munson does not disappoint. He slings an arm around Steve and is like “Yeaaahhh wow, real clever observation there buddy.” In the driest tone imaginable
And Murray, well he was sure he was right, still kind of is sure he’s right so he just squints at them for a bit and then breaks out in a wide grin, and only sounds a little sarcastic when he says “Congrats on figuring your shit out yourselves.”
Except he absolutely does not mean it because he wanted to do that, he likes doing that. And now he's sulking and will watch them so closely because something seems off
Eddie and Steve, so committed to the bit and to not let Murray win, start fake dating. All while Murray tries to catch them in their lie, and they’re all too stubborn to give up
Murray starts to slowly think he maybe was wrong though because they really seem like a couple. And even though there’s still something there he can’t ignore the proof.
When they straight up make out in front of him, and he can tell that they’re so lost in each other they probably don’t know he’s there he's about to concede
But then after that, they act so weird around each other again? It’s like before but worse and how did the pining get worse when they’re actually openly together? Regularly have their tongues down each other's throats and all?
Meanwhile, Steve and Eddie are going through it because they thought they’d be okay but that kiss was so much, and oh god they don’t think they can do this? But they can’t let Murray win?
A week and a half later at their monthly 'we survived the apocalypse, again' get-together at Hoppers and Joyce’s, Murray just gets enough of how twitchy they are. He grabs them both and locks them in a closet and is like “I don’t wanna know anymore, whatever fight you had or didn’t figure it out”
They sort of stand there shuffling from foot to foot not marking eye contact until Eddie is just like “Oh for fucks sake, I like you for real okay? The bastard was right so can we actually just date? Please?” And all Steve's can do is say "Thank god," while he smiles the most blinding smile and grabs Eddie by his collar pulling him in for a kiss
Fifteen minutes later they come out of the closet (the irony and symbolism is not lost on them) all disheveled and a little too satisfied looking and are met with very loud screaming from all the younger teens, ranging from a simple “Ew!” (Mike) to “Dude we are right here what if we'd heard? Or walked in there and seen?” (Dustin)
They’re lucky they’re too distracted by this to see Murray's self-satisfied smirk because if they did they would have pretend broken up and there would have been another month of sneaking around but this time actually dating and pretending they weren’t
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