“Scandal” fans gather around, because we have the spoiler alert to end all spoiler alerts. Star Bellamy Young told TheWrap Wednesday she received an email telling her “EVERYTHING IS CHANGED’” in a new cut of the series finale that she has yet to see.
For those non-die hard TGIT fans who haven’t been following along, that last episode, titled “Over a Cliff,” is set to air tomorrow.
When we asked Young, who plays President (and former first lady) Mellie Grant in the Shonda Rhimes series, if she knew what co-star Scott Foley (Jake) was referencing when he told us about an “ambiguous” moment in the finale last week, Young couldn’t place what he was talking about. However, it didn’t ultimately matter, as she then revealed it may not even been included in the final cut now.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about. Isn’t that interesting? I’m not sure. Oh my God, I feel terrible,” Young said. “But I will say this also, we literally just got an email that said, ‘We’re sending everyone a cut this evening’ — which they never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do — ‘EVERYTHING IS CHANGED’ — in capital letters — ‘A LOT. Please watch it before you do any more press.’ So, so, I don’t know [what he’s talking about]. But I also feel like, that’s OK. It might have changed.”
Wait a second there, Mel. The entire finale might be altered now?
“Apparently it’s real different,” Young said. “But that’s always been the joy of living and working in Shondaland: her final cut is her final draft.”
“Early on they didn’t send us all of those colored pages — you get those blue pages, green pages, yellow pages, as the different iterations of the script come out — and early on they wouldn’t send all those pages to everybody just because they thought we wouldn’t want to be inundated,” Young continued. “But then, for example, I remember the Lena Dunham episode. I turned on the TV — now I don’t have it in my head right — but in the table read she lived and in the episode, she died. Like significant things change. And sometimes it’s just editing, like Shonda will lift out whole storylines and either do away with them all together or move them five episodes later. We just learned a long time ago not to comment till we’ve seen it. We usually don’t see it till we’re tweeting.”
So, obviously, it was going to be a little difficult for Young to speak to anything that happens in the finale — since she has no idea what it is now.
“I feel horrible!” she said. “I did three and a half hours of a satellite media tour today and I feel like, ‘Uh, I wonder if I said anything?’”
ABC and Shondaland did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on Young’s statement about the new finale cut, but Rhimes tweeted not long after this story was published: “If everything changed in the Scandal finale, no one told me.”
If everything changed in the Scandal finale, no one told me.
— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) April 18, 2018
Well, hold on, Young and the rest of the “Scandal” cast has a live table read planned for tomorrow in Los Angeles ahead of the airing of the last episode. So we assume they’ll be getting new pages for that then, yes?
“No, a line item after that [in the email], is that we’ll read the production draft for the table read,” Young said. “So I feel like those guys [who are at the table read] get a twofer. They get a peek behind the curtain before and then they get to watch you know, appreciate the evolution or the changes. So ya, they’ll know everything.”
Wait, wait, wait, the live table read of the finale isn’t the finale now?
“Yes,” Young said. However, she also noted, “there is no episode of ‘Scandal’ — you couldn’t read any table read production draft and then watch any episode and it be [sic] even 80 percent the same.”
“They always evolve, which is something to be grateful for. It stays alive and everybody maybe thinks, ‘Eh it’s good enough.’ It’s never good enough. Everybody kept trying with their whole hearts.”
The series finale of “Scandal” airs Thursday at 10/9 c on ABC.