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" Steven Moffat has admitted that Louise Brealey&amp;#039;s performance as Molly Hooper in his and Mark Gatiss&amp;#039;s adaptation of Sherlock made them break their first rule of not introducing new regular characters. Speaking to Digital Spy and other journalists, the show&amp;#039;s co-creators discussed the impact of Brealey&amp;#039;s character on their version of Arthur Conan Doyle&amp;#039;s classics.  &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s really interesting, Molly, because she was an absolute one-scene character for the pilot but Loo Brealy was just so fantastic,&amp;quot; Moffat said. &amp;quot;We went against our first decision which was &amp;#039;We will not add a regular that&amp;#039;s not from Doyle&amp;#039;. The first thing we did was add a regular character that&amp;#039;s not from Doyle!&amp;quot; He continued: &amp;quot;I think she&amp;#039;s fascinating because over time, certainly by the time you get to the second series, she wins every encounter with Sherlock. &amp;quot;All the time, always. And by being honest and truthful with him. He&amp;#039;s so on the back foot now with Molly, I think it&amp;#039;s hilarious. &amp;quot;In a way that John can never put Sherlock on the back foot, Molly really, really does. She sort of wins every single conversation.&amp;quot;  Gatiss added: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a fascinating thing because it&amp;#039;s a new idea. We were doing the pilot and I said, &amp;#039;What if she has a boyfriend and Sherlock says he&amp;#039;s gay?&amp;#039;. &amp;quot;That rolled on to the whole thing with Jim and it massively expanded. It&amp;#039;s so much to do with Loo&amp;#039;s interpretation making it so heartwarming.&amp;quot; Moffat agreed: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s extraordinary. What you don&amp;#039;t get a lot of in the original stories is, &amp;#039;What do women think of him?&amp;#039;. &amp;quot;They don&amp;#039;t talk much in the original stories. It doesn&amp;#039;t happen much. There&amp;#039;s Irene Adler who he barely meets in the original. There&amp;#039;s Mrs Hudson who just brings tea in. &amp;quot;It was fun to have that perspective on him, what would a modern young woman make of this vulnerable monster.&amp;quot;  Gatiss said of the audience response to Molly: &amp;quot;You could imagine that the audience might not like her, that maybe the girls who like Benedict [Cumberbatch] might not, but they adore her.&amp;quot; Cumberbatch said of Molly and Sherlock&amp;#039;s changing relationship: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a beautiful thing. It&amp;#039;s just a lovely thing. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s extraordinary. She&amp;#039;s a wonderful actress, Louise Brealey. So it&amp;#039;s really good fun, that strain of it. All the characters feature more. All of them are back and all of them play a role.&amp;quot; Asked how much Molly - like John - is a way into the Sherlock character for the audience, he said: &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d have to ask Loo. But I imagine so from what I hear. She sort of represents a few people out there. &amp;quot;They feel like her about someone in their lives who&amp;#039;s blissfully cruel to their advances.&amp;quot;  He added: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s also about what she has, which is independence. She may be quiet, she may be retiring but she&amp;#039;s a strong woman at the same time. &amp;quot;Just because she&amp;#039;s fallen for a couple of sociopaths doesn&amp;#039;t necessarily rule her out as a sane and courageous and strong woman.&amp;quot; Asked about the different role of women in Moffat and Gatiss&amp;#039;s Sherlock compared to the original novels, Martin Freeman said: &amp;quot;Well I suppose they do definitely have more to do.  &amp;quot;Even though we&amp;#039;re doing it in 2013 and it&amp;#039;s contemporary, they&amp;#039;re obviously extremely respectful of Conan Doyle but they can&amp;#039;t be hamstrung by it. It has to be our own version.&amp;quot; He continued: &amp;quot;Because it&amp;#039;s 2013, rightly women are going to have more input in the show but at the same time it doesn&amp;#039;t really impinge much on John and Sherlock because there has to be that relationship in a way. &amp;quot;Also because Sherlock&amp;#039;s attitude towards humanity, including women, is what it is, which is pretty dismissive. John is a lot more open to humanity and women, certainly open to women!&amp;quot;  Freeman added: &amp;quot;Sherlock&amp;#039;s pretty dismissive of everybody regardless of gender so it doesn&amp;#039;t really affect John and Sherlock &amp;quot;They are a very very tight unit those two, which I guess is where the thing of them being a couple comes in, it&amp;#039;s a pretty short walk to go there. &amp;quot;John also tries to live a reasonably 3D life whereas Sherlock is totally focused on the job in hand. &amp;quot;So he doesn&amp;#039;t really listen to Mrs Hudson. He uses Molly Hooper when he needs to. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not that he&amp;#039;s a monster, he&amp;#039;s not a monster at all but he&amp;#039;s fixated. I guess by John Watson&amp;#039;s terminology, he&amp;#039;s a psychopath.&amp;quot;  Of working with his own real-life partner Amanda Abbington, who has been cast as Mary Morstan - John Watson&amp;#039;s love interest and eventual wife in the Arthur Conan Doyle books - Freeman said: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s been lovely, it&amp;#039;s been really really nice. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s known [show producer] Sue Vertue and Mark Gatiss for a very long time and they wanted her to be in it, which is fine by me. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s a really good actor, I know how good she is and I know how easy she is to work with and I&amp;#039;m a big fan of hers as a craftsperson. So yeah, she&amp;#039;s wonderful!&amp;quot;  Sherlock will return for a third series on January 1, 2014 at 9pm on BBC One.  A special mini-episode of Sherlock, titled &amp;#039;Many Happy Returns&amp;#039;, will also debut on Christmas Day via the BBC&amp;#039;s interactive Red Button service. Sherlock series three - photo gallery:  Catch up on all the latest TV and Movies releases in Digital Spy&amp;#039;s Screen Time:      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/sherlock/news/a536572/sherlock-showrunner-steven-moffat-molly-broke-our-first-rule/>