Laura Linney: Not Getting a Proper Ending for The Big C Was "My Biggest Fear"

Although it may seem like The Big C — which wraps its four-season run this spring — is coming to an early end, star and executive producer Laura Linney said her "biggest fear" was not getting a proper conclusion to the show at all.

"I feel really good about how we finish the story, all of us together," Linney told reporters at Showtime's winter TV previews Saturday. "Certainly, the lesson that I learn over and over and over again in anything creative is that nothing is ever what you think it's going to be ever. Things happen that you never think will happen."

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When the show returns on Monday, April 29 at 10/9c, it will return as a "limited series event," aka four hour-long episodes subtitled Hereafter. Although things may not have gone originally as planned, Linney was happy to reflect on the "huge journey" she went on with the show. "It's been an enormous education for me the past three years and the four seasons," she said. "It's allowed me the luxury of [figuring out], how do you execute what's in your being, your mind ...  and then how do you put that forth? How do you translate from the ephemeral to something that is produced? So it was a huge education and I'm greatly relieved and I'm nostalgic already."

After wrapping production on the series shortly before the holidays, Linney joked that she was still recovering from the process of working on a television series. "I went to bed for about two weeks and I've just gotten up," she said.

Check out photos from The Big C

In addition to her education behind the scenes, Linney talked about how she evolved physically and superficially to film the final episodes, and the final part of Cathy's battle with cancer. "I think we didn't want to glamorize the challenge of illness and what happens to you physically," she said. "I lost some weight along the way. We cut my hair. There were all sorts of things that we did to honestly sort of approach the physical transformation of what happens when someone is seriously ill."

Although Cathy's cancer will worsen this season, producers avoided giving any further spoilers about her condition. "We're not saying necessarily that this character dies," executive producer Jenny Bicks said. "I will say that the final scene of the series will be very nostalgic for viewers of the show because we reintroduce visual elements that we've played with throughout the course of the series. It's a visually stunning moment and a very happy moment."

The final season of The Big C starts on Monday, April 29 at 10/9c on Showtime. Will you miss the show?