Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker is breaking her own glass ceiling: ’I don’t have to be the sidekick, I can be the hero’
WITH her first episode just days away, the new Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker, hopes her role as the first female doc of the series will break the glass ceiling for young women “I don’t have to be the sidekick, I can be the hero.”
TV
Don't miss out on the headlines from TV. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THIRTEEN years after the revived Doctor Who hit screens, and 55 years after it first aired, a woman is set to take the helm of the series — and the Doctor’s time-travelling spaceship — for the first time.
With the British show’s huge, cult-like worldwide following of Whovians, Jodie Whittaker knows that portraying the Doctor will be a life-changing experience. And the journey has only just begun.
DOCTOR WHO’S DEEPLY EMOTIONAL FAREWELL
BIG BANG THEORY INSIDER REVEALS FINALE SECRETS
YOUR NEXT TV OBSESSION COMING TO NETFLIX
“I know the full madness of it all doesn’t really kick in until it’s aired, then for the rest of your life,” she says.
Whittaker’s first few minutes of screen time on the show came last December, when Peter Capaldi’s Doctor regenerated into Whittaker’s 13th incarnation.
“Brilliant,” was her first word onscreen, uttered in that thick West Yorkshire accent.
She was last seen in that episode plummeting towards the ground as the TARDIS hurtled in the opposite direction.
Whittaker, 36, is quick with a joke and fills the room with a frenetic, restless energy — traits she has brought to her portrayal of Doctor Who’s titular time-travelling alien.
The 13th Doctor also has a new outfit for the BBC-produced series. Gone are the flamboyant suits, bow ties and colourful scarfs, replaced by a grey trench coat, rainbow-striped T-shirt, suspenders and planet-shaped earrings.
As is customary, the regenerated Time Lord has a new Sonic Screwdriver, the show’s iconic multipurpose tool.
DOCTOR WHO A WOMAN? WHY THE HELL NOT?
Whittaker’s first season also comes with a fresh logo and branding.
The producers are eager to sell it as a good jumping-in point for new audiences.
Showrunner Chris Chibnall, who previously worked with Whittaker on Broadchurch, has promised new adventures, companions and monsters.
Whittaker says series 11 will take the show in a fresh direction while remaining loyal to its past.
“I’m completely new to the entire world of it,” she says. “But you don’t need to know anything about it. We don’t disregard what has gone before — we honour it — but move it forward.
“You have all that amazing TV to go back to but you’re not going to watch episode one (of the new series) and not know what’s going on.”
Whittaker admits to having moments of panic when she was first cast and realised the enormity of the situation.
“I had this weird idea that I was going to walk out of my flat and it was going to be like Notting Hill where Rhys Ifans comes out in his pants, and I was never going to exit my house again without sunglasses and a cape,” she says. “Reality sort of distorted in that mania.”
Whittaker reports that her predecessors, among them her friend and Broadchurch co-star David Tennant, were happy and excited for her fill the Doctor’s shoes. “They know this journey is hard and wonderful and forever,” she says.
The season’s 10 50-minute episodes were shot over an “enjoyable” yet “intense” nine-month span that ended in August, with Whittaker moving to Cardiff from her home in London, where she is based with her husband, US actor and writer Christian Contreras, and young child.
She says working with the Doctor’s new companions provided “great banter all day”.
Her friends are Yasmin, played by Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole’s Ryan and well-known comedian and actor Bradley Walsh as Graham.
“He’s a Whovian, so he’s come in from an excited point of view,” Whittaker says. “For me, Mandip and Tosin, we’re very new to it all. No matter what we do in all of our careers, this will probably be the thing most people remember us for. What a wonderful thing for it to be.”
The casting of Whittaker as the first female to play the Doctor attracted mostly praise, but some fans, who did not believe the Doctor could be a woman, criticised the decision.
With the Doctor regenerating into a new form whenever a new actor takes on the role, Whittaker says casting a woman “does not break the rules” of the Doctor Who canon.
Nevertheless, as a young actor, she never would have believed she would one day play the character.
“It’s wonderful to think that young female fans of the show can say, ‘I don’t just have to aim to be a sidekick, I can be the hero in the scenario’,” she says. “We don’t put the ceilings on ourselves. My glass ceiling was never put there by me. It takes life to put it there.
“Hopefully this is a massive moment but then it becomes not a moment as well. That will be the best thing to come out of this, when casting announcements are not such a surprise when it’s not a guy.”
Australia is home to plentiful Doctor Who fans, some of whom have followed the show since it first aired on the ABC in 1965.
The extent of the show’s reach and the passion of the fans still amazes Whittaker.
“That’s mad to me that this very quintessentially British show, that is such a fabric of British television, is such a world show,” she says.
As for how the Australian Whovians will react to her portrayal of the Doctor?
“Hopefully I’m not on the dartboard.”
Whittaker hopes to one day return to Australia, where she travelled for a few months as an 18-year old, driving from Coober Pedy to Adelaide and up the east coast to Cairns.
Ideally, she wants to work on a film in Australia, or somewhere warm, rather than the chilly locales she often finds herself in.
“I had an absolute ball in Australia, but the cultural Australian experience I failed — I was the typical Brit aboard,” she says.
She’d do anything to get back here, she says — “As long as it’s not swimming because there are too many sharks.”
WATCH: Doctor Who season 11 premieres on ABC iView on October 8, immediately after the UK broadcast, and will air that evening on ABC and in selected cinemas. Season 10 and fan-voted top 20 episodes on iview now.
Stars stunned after shock G-string scenes air
Sex-fuelled scenes aired in prime-time on Channel 9 this week, leaving viewers — and stars — stunned. Now, those involved tell James Weir of their shock.
‘I was so scared’: Dannii’s paparazzi ordeal
Dannii Minogue has opened up about an ‘out of body experience’ with the paparazzi that left her feeling like there was a ‘price on our heads’, as she makes emotional comments about sister Kylie.