Scandal fans watched tonight’s jam-packed season finale and received a major revelation (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) because of a single line, “Dad???”
The ABC drama’s “gladiators” as they are called, heard it live at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at the end of the first-ever onstage table read of the show, using the finale script.
The session ended about 10 minutes into the 10p.m. airing. The cast whooped and hollered, too.
“The satisfying part is, I knew all along,” actor Joe Morton crowed as the cast finished reading Act 6 ,which revealed that Rowan ( Morton) is the father of Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington).
At the top of the session, show creator/executive producer Shonda Rhimes said she hoped the experiment would give the audience a feeling of what it’s like to be in the room at a real table read.
Washington said she didn’t know the finale’s plot twist until the first table read of the script.
“I grew up in a household where Joe Morton is a great American hero,” she said. “Every week I would say: ‘Joe, I really hope we have some scenes together. He’d say: ‘We do. We do.’ ”