Actress Jenna-Louise Coleman says the hardest thing about being cast as the new companion on Doctor Who was keeping the secret.
Coleman says that she went through six weeks of auditions and interviews before she won the role and that during the time she was sworn to secrecy about the process.
“I wasn’t allowed to say that it was Doctor Who at any point. Not talking to my agent, not when I arrived at the audition, and I certainly couldn’t tell anyone at all what I was up to next,” Coleman tells the Daily Times. “When you keep a secret this big, the temptation to tell is all the more irresistible, especially as I live with three schoolfriends. With girl politics the way they are, I couldn’t tell just one friend. I had to phone one of them on the way to the press conference to tell her that I’d borrowed her shoes, in case she saw them in photos.”
The secrecy surrounding the casting is nothing new, Coleman adds.
“When she was auditioning, Karen Gillan had been given a codename—Panic Moon, which is an anagram of Companion—so I worked out that Men on Waves is an anagram of Woman Seven, because this is the seventh series. ” she says. “Weirdly, seven is my lucky number and this is my seventh job.”
And while Steven Moffat and company are maintaining the air of secrecy surrounding Coleman’s character, she said she’s got a few hints from the team.
“I have an idea of the story, of the character and of a few surprises, but I don’t know her name or where she’s from. I just told Steven [Moffat] and [producer] Caroline Skinner ‘Don’t tell me anything until I need to know it’,” she says.
Leave a Reply