I'm not sure why they wouldn't want to reveal the plot to the actors until later. I know they kept Mary's past secret from Amanda, which means that she must have filmed the first two episodes of S3 before she was even allowed to read the script for HLV. If I hadn't heard that I would have assumed that they all had the scripts for all episodes before they started filming.
Amanda did say she would have played it differently if she'd known who Mary was, and maybe that's what they were trying to avoid. But, not being an actor myself, it strikes me as almost insulting to the actors' capabilities - acting is their job after all! After all, if they were making a film, or staging a play come to that, the actors would know the outcome for their characters from the beginning, and hopefully that would not adversely affect their performance. Maybe they just don't want to put extra pressure on the actors to have to keep a secret for ages (but then, there will still be quite a long time between filming and airing).
I wondered if the secret Mark was talking about was Mycroft's death? Partly because that's what's being talked about here (much as I've tried to avoid that discussion, because I don't want it to happen!), because it's Mark's character (i.e. he could have let something slip about not being in it any more) and because if he'd mentioned it, Benedict could have misunderstood and thought he was talking about the bets on Mycroft's death in TAB.
Last edited by Liberty (February 23, 2016 4:56 pm)