WHO do you think you are?

HEN Jodie Whittaker watched TV shows as she was growing up, the people saving the day didn’t look like her.

They were “white guys, running around, doing really cool stuff”, while the women on screen were so often on the sidelines.

But now, aged 36, the Yorkshireborn star is taking centre stage as the first woman to play The Doctor, in BBC1’s famed Doctor Who.

“It’s 2018, women are not a genre, we are just the other half of the population, so to see us doing things shouldn’t be such a surprise,” suggests Jodie when we meet at the studios in Cardiff, during a break from filming.

“But I know it is, because I watch TV and film and we are often less active in things. Or we’re the emotional point of view of a story line.”

She adds: “There’s lots of different actors in this show rather than different sexes, we’re all just actors. That’s what we feel like this show represents.

“It’s a moment and I’m a part of it and I’m proud of it. But I can’t wait for it not to be a moment, so that someone going to drama school at 18 doesn’t need to think, ‘There aren’t any jobs for me’.”

The gender of the person controlling the Tardis isn’t the only thing different about this series of the sci-fi favourite.

There’s an all-new supporting cast, with Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole playing The Doctor’s companions.

It’s moving from Saturday nights to a brand new slot on Sunday evenings, while new showrunner Chris Chibnall, of Broadchurch fame (which Jodie also memorably starred in) promises it’s bigger and bolder than ever before.

So how were Jodie’s nerves when she first arrived on set?

“It’s always terrifying to do your first ever take,” confides the energetic star, whose previous TV roles include the lead in BBC hit Trust Me, costume drama Tess Of The D’Urbervilles and an episode of Netflix’s Black Mirror.

“My first ever take on Broadchurch was close-ups of being told that Danny Latimer had been killed,” says Jodie.

“That is an amazing learning experience for any actor to be put through, to be thrown in.”

With Doctor Who, Jodie adds, the sense of responsibility she feels to be honest and truthful was “weighted with 55 years of history”.

“So there are the natural nerves you have of doing any job you’re passionate about... Cut to the responsibility of those shoes to fill and I’d be absolutely lying if I said I didn’t feel it,” she elaborates.

Once she bagged the role of the 13th incarnation of The Doctor, Jodie was careful not to make too many decisions about how she would play it.

“No point me thinking, ‘I’m going to be this kind of Doctor’ before I started shooting, because I had no idea what it was like to work with these guys, to have any of the energy of the guest stars,” she suggests.

“It was best to be open, and I think that plays into the Doctor I wanted to play, that openheartedness and chaos within an ability to find a stillness in the tiniest details.”

Specific details about what we can expect from this series have been kept very hush-hush.

But while Jodie is determined not to give any spoilers away, she does let on what themes she thinks are important this series.

“Friendship and loyalty and survival,” she notes.

“We want to engage with the eight-year-olds and the 80-yearolds, whether they’re into Doctor Who or not, because we’re saying, ‘ You don’t need to know everything, but I bet you’ll enjoy it’.”