#4 When her husband, Peter Peel, surprisingly reappears at the end of "The Forget-Me-Knot", Emma decides to leave Steed and her spy career behind. In the distant shot in which he appears, Peter Peel looks suspiciously like Steed (and was in fact played by Patrick Macnee's stunt double, Peter Weston), and like Steed, he drives a two-door convertible Bentley, albeit a contemporary model. Emma meets her replacement, Tara King (played by Linda Thorson), who enters the building as she herself is leaving and tells her that Steed likes his tea stirred "anti-clockwise". Peel would be the last of the "talented amateurs" with whom John Steed was teamed, as her successor is a neophyte professional agent.
In real life, Diana Rigg had chosen to leave the series for a number of reasons, one of which was to accept a role in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (similarly, her predecessor Honor Blackman departed to appear in the Bond film Goldfinger). During her first series, Rigg eventually discovered that she was being paid less than the cameramen: afterwards her salary was tripled and combined with her loyalty to Macnee, she was persuaded to come back for 25 additional episodes (including her farewell episode, which was actually shot well into the Tara King season). Eventually the arduous shooting schedules, various conflicts with the producers, the lure of film and stage roles, and a desire to challenge herself as an actress all combined in her decision to leave the show for good.[7]
After leaving the series, Rigg played a variation of the Emma Peel character in two German short films produced for the 8mm market: The Diadem and The Mini-Killers. Little behind the scenes information has surfaced, though the films themselves have survived.[8][9] |
