When an estimated 11 million people sit down to watch the final episode of Happy Valley tonight, one viewer will be especially keen to see how the finale unfolds: 16-year-old actor Rhys Connah, who plays Ryan Cawood.
“I’ll be on the edge of my seat along with everybody else,” says Rhys, whose character has been the focal point of the series starring Sarah Lancashire and James Norton. “Even I haven’t seen the last episode yet, and I can’t wait to watch it.”
He’ll be watching with his parents and younger siblings at his home in Heywood, Greater Manchester, as Sally Wainwright’s gripping drama comes to a close. Parts of the script for the final episode were redacted, including for Rhys, so nobody in the cast has a complete idea of how the story will pan out. And what Rhys does know, he’s kept firmly to himself – not even telling his family.
He laughs: “Mum really wants to know what happens but not a single word has passed my lips about the final episode.”
Happy Valley is set in the Calderdale area, around Hebden Bridge and Halifax in West Yorkshire, and the title is a reference to police slang about the prevalence of drugs there.
Although the first two seasons were a hit, the third, which began on New Year’s Day, has reached unprecedented heights, with 11.3 million watching the first episode, the show becoming a major water-cooler talking point, and social media full of predictions about how the series will end tonight.
Rhys’s mother was sent the script for the very first episode of the series, which made its debut in 2014. Rhys had been scouted at an after-school acting club when he was eight, and the violent and uncompromising drama from the pen of Wainwright raised a few eyebrows.
Rhys says: “I never really wanted to be an actor. I just went to this club because my mum told me to. Then this script came in, and at first my mum thought it was some really nice kids’ show from the title. Then she read it… it was not the nice, fun little thing she was expecting. I was only allowed to watch my scenes, not the whole show, because I was so young.”
Rhys reprised his role as Ryan for the second series, broadcast in 2016, and the long wait for season three is largely down to him. “Sally wanted to wait until Ryan was old enough to be able to have some agency and go around on his own,” he said. “And she wanted me to play him again, which was fantastic. I suppose it’s a good job I still wanted to be an actor, or it might have been a wasted seven years for a lot of people.”
Between seasons two and three, Rhys has acted in the 2015 supernatural thriller The Messenger, and 2019’s drama The Runaways. He also had a part in To Walk Invisible, Wainwright’s 2016 dramatisation of the life of the Brontës, firmly putting him in the Wainwright “family”.
“That’s exactly what it feels like, a family,” he says. “I’ve learned so much from acting with Sarah Lancashire, Siobhan Finneran, Con O’Neill, James Norton, all of them. They’ve all been so helpful and I’ve picked up so much just watching them work.”
Without giving too much away about Ryan’s story tonight, is Rhys sorry to see Happy Valley end? Would he like to see a fourth series, whether he’s in it or not? He says: “Sally always said it would end at the third series, and I really respect that she is so passionate and stood by that. She had a story to tell and didn’t want to carry it on beyond this.
“There have been a lot of people saying there should be another series, and it is really nice that people like it so much that they want more, but it ends here.”
