The Doctor Who star on moving to America, missing London and her love of a pampering massage
A move to the Big Apple has paid off for Doctor Who star Freema Agyeman. Simon Button catches up with her
Talking 10 to the dozen, Freema Agyeman insists, “I have actually learnt to slow down when I speak.” You could have fooled me. Having established herself in the States after such homeland hits as Doctor Who and Law & Order:
UK, she’s a very happy and exciting person to be around.
When we first meet it’s at the Monte-carlo Television Festival, where Freema is animatedly promoting her latest show, medical drama New Amsterdam. We meet again a week later at the Soho Hotel in London, where she’s looking very summery in a white top and floral skirt and is clearly thrilled to be back in the homeland for a while.
She laughs about one early stateside audition where she walked out of the room feeling confident she’d nailed it. Then the casting director came up to her and said they wanted her back in the room, but with the caveat, “Can you just slow down?”
Looking a good decade younger than her 40 years, the actress is still a fast talker and seems surprised by her own success. America wasn’t part of a grand plan.
“I was lucky enough to be working quite consistently at home,” says Freema, whose big break as the Doctor’s sidekick Martha Jones came in 2007, four years after her TV debut in Crossroads. “I was around my friends and my family and I wasn’t looking to pursue something somewhere else. I was very happy and feeling very fortunate.”
But then an actor friend suggested she pop across the pond for pilot season, which is when American TV tries on new shows for size. “And I was like, ‘I’m not free to do it and also I’m really happy here and everything is fine.’ But it stayed in my mind and once I was out of contract I decided to give it a go.”
That was after she had hung up
her gown as court prosecutor Alesha Phillips on the sixth and final season of Law & Order: UK in 2012 and within the year she was in Sex And The City prequel The Carrie Diaries as a Manhattan magazine editor.
She then landed a recurring role in the Netflix sci-fi drama Sense8 before signing on to play head of oncology Dr Helen Sharpe in Nyc-set New Amsterdam.
At first, Freema worried she wasn’t right for the part, saying: “Helen’s very measured, very level, very in control and I thought, ‘I can’t squeeze myself into that sort of stable behaviour’ because my energy is insane. Sometimes, I can see a person straight away and I know exactly how they’ll move and talk, what they’ll eat and drink and listen to, but I had no clue with Helen.
“It was like, ‘My God, it’s going to be a slow burn just trying to warm her up.’ But it’s a challenge I’ve enjoyed, trying to navigate her as a character.”
She prepared for the show by speaking to and shadowing doctors. There are also on-set advisers and a pronunciation drop box that puts phrases and terminology into context for actors and “a massive support network to make sure we’re doing it as authentically as possible”.
So could she switch career should this acting thing not work out? She has an actor friend who quit Holby City to pursue a medical career. “And now he’s a surgeon, I kid you not. So it is possible.” But maybe not for Freema, who adds, “Don’t pass out or I won’t know what to do.”
Headlined by Ryan Eggold, who plays doctor Max Goodwin, New Amsterdam is a fast-paced, hardhitting show that’s been as much a journey for Freema as it is for the audience. “We don’t know a great deal in advance in terms of storylines. I’m sure if we asked they’d tell us but I don’t generally want to know.”
“I think it’s sometimes healthy to rock your own boat”
with season two on the way, season one ended on a cliffhanger and Freema didn’t know if she’d be back for the second season – and she’s not at liberty to say much about the new series except that “there’s gonna be some big changes happening”.
Did she find the suspense exciting or nerve-racking? “I find it really exciting. I have a friend whose lifestyle is very different to mine and she says, ‘How do you go to bed at night not knowing where your next pay cheque is going to come from, which country you’re going to be in and what your life is going to be like in five years time?’
“My response is, ‘How do you go to bed each night knowing exactly the answer to all of those questions?’ I’ve been so fortunate to have such diversity in my career. You have to be someone who’s OK with change. If not, then don’t pick acting as a career.”
Freema played a medical student in Doctor Who and its Torchwood spin-off. “So people on social media are saying to me this is Martha Jones graduating now because it was only at the end that she qualified,” she smiles. “This could be her after-cardiff life and in a way there are similarities because she was very together and quite headstrong.”
The actress was born in London to an Iranian mother and a Ghanaian father (they split when she was young) and was educated at a convent school where she toyed with the idea of becoming a marine biologist. But a summer stint at theatre school soon put paid to that. Hooked on acting, she studied drama and performing arts at Middlesex University.
After graduating in 2000 she played chef Lola wise in the Crossroads reboot and popped up in The Bill and Silent Witness before hopping into David Tennant’s Tardis in 2007. She left the role after a 2010 Christmas special but still gets stopped in the street by fans. She also gets a lot of Law & Order shout-outs and attention from Sense8’s cult following. “when people come up to me I always like to try and guess what show they’re going to want to talk about. And what I really love is how loyal the fans are and how they’ll support you in your next venture, even if it’s not necessarily up their street.”
The streets of New York are where she is mostly to be found these days, although she returns to London as often as her filming schedules will allow. I ask what she most enjoys when she’s in the UK and she beams, “Oh mate, I’ve gotta watch my Coast Vs Country and Escape To The Country, have my cups of tea…
“It just has a different vibe. This is my home fundamentally and it always will be. Getting off the plane, just to hear the voices and the London sound – it makes me realise that when I’m here I don’t have to give things as much thought. I know what I’m doing and I can navigate easily.”
Familiarity has its downside, though. “You can fall into a little bit of life complacency when you know where you like going and what you like doing.” That’s why she has enjoyed relocating to New York. “Suddenly you’re in this new backdrop and you can almost rediscover yourself. I was alone there, although I never felt alone because this production couldn’t have been more welcoming. But I walked the streets by myself and I think it’s sometimes healthy to rock your own boat.”
She likes the idea of putting down roots in New York City. She has taken out a two-year lease on an apartment in Brooklyn, which suggests that even if she’s not back for season two of New Amsterdam she has other projects in the pipeline there.
Freema starts each day with yoga and relaxes by reading books (she has five on the go at the moment) and doing crosswords.
“I have them strewn all over my apartment, half-finished,” she says, but guffaws at the prospect of completing the New York
Times’ famously tricky crossword. “Honey, I haven’t graduated to that stage yet. I’m just a novice. Forget about it.”
She is also into cryotherapy. “I freeze myself. It’s addictive,” she says. Likewise massage. “Anything to do with body treatments I used to think of as luxuries. But when you get older in life and start to feel little aches and pains, things like deep tissue massages are all about self-care. we do long days and long shoots on the show so you need to constantly be in a state of good health.”
Season one of New Amsterdam is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. Season two is coming soon.