Playing a small role in the finale of BBC comedy Gavin & Stacey has been a high point in an award-winning career that spans stage and screen, according to Welsh actor Rakie Ayola.

She said playing the registrar who married TV fans’ favourites Nessa and Smithy, played by show writers Ruth Jones and James Corden, was a pivotal moment.

“Standing between Ruth and James, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the picture,” said Ayola.

“I thought, ‘wow, look at me, so this is the most important and influential minute of my career’.”

The Bafta Cymru award-winning actor has appeared in TV dramas including The Pact, Anthony, Silent Witness, Casualty and Doctor Who, among others.

Ayola, from Cardiff, explained how the opportunity to appear in the comedy, set between Barry and Billericay, came about after she bumped into Jones while visiting a theatre.

She said Jones then got in touch a few days later and said she had “one scene” left in the final episode and wondered if Ayola wanted to be involved.

Ayola told BBC Radio Wales’ Lucy Owen that she guessed the scene was a “wedding, a birth or a funeral” and then guessed Jones wanted her as a registrar for a wedding.

Fans of the show had long held out hope that the characters would finally get together, with 59% of Wales’ population and 39% of the UK watching the Christmas Day finale.

“I just put two and two together and bingo,” said Ayola.

In 2023, she was awarded Bafta Cymru’s annual Siân Phillips award, which is presented to a Welsh person who has made a significant contribution in a major feature film or TV programme.

TV viewers saw her last in Channel 4’s The Falling, starring Keeley Hawes and Paapa Essiedu, about a nun and Catholic priest who fall in love.

But she has also been filming in Wales for The Party, a new five-part drama, with fellow Welsh actors Luke Evans and Tom Cullen.

The Party, which is based on the acclaimed novel by Elizabeth Day, is about a journalist shaped by his friendship with a wealthy politician.

It has received support from the Welsh government via Creative Wales and is due to be screened this autumn.