Is there a doctor in the house?
Before Jodie Whittaker makes her debut as the Time Lord in Doctor Who she’s set to appear as a doctor of a very different kind in a new drama for BBC1 called Trust Me. The actress talks to SUSAN GRIFFIN about challenging herself and “game changing” roles
AS SOON as Peter Capaldi announced he was stepping down as the Time Lord in Doctor Who, all bets were on as to who would replace him.
Death In Paradise’s Kris Marshall was a hot favourite for a long time, as was James Bond’s gadget man Ben Whishaw, We Need To Talk About Kevin’s Tilda Swinton and Fleabag’s Pheobe Waller-Bridge.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Jodie Whittaker was revealed to be the next, and first female, Doctor.
“I’m beyond excited to begin this epic journey with Chris (Chibnall, the series’ new head writer and executive producer) and with every Whovian on this planet,” she said in a formal statement.
“It’s more than an honour to play the Doctor. It means remembering everyone I used to be, while stepping forward to embrace everything the Doctor stands for: hope. I can’t wait.”
Before she makes her debut at Christmas, when Capaldi bows out, Jodie is appearing as a very different kind of doctor in a new drama for BBC1 called Trust Me.
In the four-parter, she stars as mum-of-one Cath Hardacre, a caring, hard-working nurse whose life derails when she raises her concerns about the standards slipping in the hospital.
Sacked for whistleblowing, she turns to her best friend Dr Ally Sutton who’s emigrating to New Zealand.
At a drunken party Cath finds Ally’s discarded paperwork and makes the desperate decision to take a second chance at life – by stealing her best friend’s identity. But just how long can she lead a double-life without serious repercussions?
“I think it really fascinated me that we could easily judge her and we could’ve taken the really moral high ground, like, ‘Who does this? She’s obviously a b***h’. Whereas it’s a much more blurred line,” explains the 35-year-old actress in a warm Yorkshire accent a few weeks before the Doctor Who announcement.
“There is ego; it’s morally dubious, but there’s also good intention, which makes it complicated. Also, I didn’t know where it was going when I read it. I loved that, it’s exciting to play.”
As part of the preparation, she and writer Dan Sefton, who has worked on the likes of Mr Selfridge and Delicious, were taken on a tour of an Edinburgh hospital.
“I only did medical research that I needed to do. You can’t act the medical stuff, you’re either holding a scalpel wrong or right,”
highlights Jodie, who has a two-year-old child with her husband of nine years, Christian Contreras. “You don’t find out you’ve got a job six months before (you start shooting), you find out a few weeks (before), so they suggested watching 24 Hours In A&E. It’s real people, real scenarios and the thing you notice the most is no one’s running in going, ‘Get me this! Go, go, go!’ Everyone knows what they’re doing, it’s quite calm so it was interesting to play the person that’s out of sync with everyone else’s rhythm.” It’s the first time Jodie’s heard of imposter doctors. “One thing I was conscious about is that this is a story and when being asked about the NHS, it’s a really precious thing to people and to me personally,” she notes. “We’ve got to just allow ourselves to tell stories within it without saying, ‘This is what we’re saying about the whole thing’. “It’s an environment that is perfect for drama, like lots of things are. It explores a storyline that until today none of us knew how common it was.”
Jodie doesn’t consider herself suitably “clear-headed” to be in the medical profession (“There’s a reason why I’m an actress and not a doctor”) but she can relate to the idea of being an imposter.
“You always think you’re about to be found out. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t feel like that,” admits the actress who studied at Guildhall School Of Music And Drama before making her professional stage debut in 2005.
The following year she appeared alongside the late Peter O’Toole in the movie Venus. The industry deems it her breakthrough role and Jodie herself describes it as “a game changer”.
“Venus absolutely changed everything because you could say I went from straight out of drama school to being in a film.”
As for the Dorset-based detective drama Broadchurch, in which she starred as grieving mother Beth Latimer, Jodie believes it will take time to appreciate just how significant the role has been.
“It’s definitely been an amazing thing for my career but it’s difficult to know how much of a game changer it is. I may, in five years, be able to go, ‘That was the catalyst for all these things’.
“But I’m not (Star Wars’) Daisy Ridley. It’s not like I’ve gone from an absolute brand-new face to the biggest franchise in the world.
“It’s from being on television or in films and working and knowing people to then being in a role that has a huge audience.” Jodie cherishes the people she met during the three-series run (“I’ll know them for the rest of my life”), not least Chris Chibnall, the Broadchurch creator who cast her in Doctor Who. It’s an exciting new chapter for them both but then Jodie is always keen to challenge herself. “As far as work goes I feel like I’ve tried to not take the same job twice. It’s hard because people know you for a certain thing, (but) it’s always finding the thing that makes it difficult and interesting.
“I’ve been really lucky because the jobs I’ve done have been really hard and that’s what you want. You want to have to work at it, you don’t want it to be second nature. It’s just fantastic to have parts that are so rich to be able to throw yourself into.”
Trust Me begins on BBC1 on Tuesday, at 9pm.