Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker feared she was “doing it wrong”
After more than 50 years on the air, Doctor Who has firmly established that with each new Doctor comes a fresh new perspective on the role of the Time Lord. When Jodie Whittaker stepped in as the Thirteenth Doctor after Peter Capaldi, she worried that she was “doing it wrong.”
Express.co.uk reports that Whittaker was a guest on the Finest Hour show on BBC Radio 6, where she talked about her early nervousness about taking on the iconic role. She’d wanted a fresh perspective on the part, so like many actors she didn’t watch any of the episodes of the Doctor before her leading up to the character’s regeneration. When she finally took a look at Capaldi’s work, she realized that her Doctor and his Doctor were vastly different. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve done it wrong. I’ve done it wrong’ and we were only like six weeks in and I had seven months left. I came in to work I was like, ‘You should have told me, I’ve been doing it wrong!’”
The revelation that she’d been “doing it wrong” hit her hard, but she soon learned she wasn’t doing it wrong at all.
Jodie Whittaker felt the pressure of being the first female Doctor
Whittaker met with producer Chris Chibnall, with whom she’d worked on the hit series Broadchurch, and he assured her that they wanted a “fresh perspective” on the Doctor. That’s what makes the Doctor special.
And in Whittaker’s case, being the first female Doctor meant a very new perspective, one that would be very different no matter what. Chibnall said that she was doing what they needed her to do. “He was very clear that he wanted me to come in with a very fresh perspective and to not necessarily sit at the beginning and work through the entire thing, because his vision was that I came in with a new energy for that.”
Now that she has some experience as the Time Lord under her belt, Whittaker has settled into the role, but rumors are already swirling that regeneration is afoot and her time on the show could be coming to an end as the series prepares for the next Time Lord.
Next. Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) explains why she left Doctor Who. dark
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