Entertainment

Jodie Whittaker: I was lucky I could keep my own accent as Doctor Who

The actress said not having to worry about dialect helped her concentrate on other aspects of playing the Time Lord.
The actress said not having to worry about dialect helped her concentrate on other aspects of playing the Time Lord.

New Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker has said she was relieved that the 13th doctor was allowed to share her own Huddersfield accent but warned viewers not to expect a “Yorkshire character”.

Whittaker said that, unlike other parts, including her role in the ITV hit Broadchurch, she was never asked to do any particular voice for the doctor, so she just stuck with her own.

“We did the auditions and throughout that entire process, which was quite long process, it never felt wrong,” she said.

“But it’s certainly not a Yorkshire character. It’s a body with a voice and that voice is mine.

“I think if I was RP or if I was from London and I’d chosen to do a Yorkshire accent it would just have a meaning behind it in a way that it doesn’t in this instance …. because it’s me.”

BBC handout photo of Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who
BBC handout photo of Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who (BBC)

And Whittaker, who was born in Skelmanthorpe, near Huddersfield, said that not having to worry about dialect helped her concentrate on other aspects of the role.

She said: “I love working on dialect but, with this kind of vocabulary and this amount of lines every evening ….

“I take my hat off to David (Tennant) who transformed his voice as well as doing a phenomenal doctor, because it requires an extra thing.

“I was lucky I could just use what I’ve been given.”

Whittaker was speaking in Sheffield after a press screening of the first episode of the new Dr Who series, where she joked with Leeds-born Mandip Gill, who plays new companion, Yasmin, about who had the broader Northern accent.

“We just get broader and broader throughout the day,” she said.

Whittaker said she was “really proud” of doing all her own stunts in the first episode, which features an action-packed climax, despite admitting: “I absolutely bricked it.”

She said the sequence was one of the first she shot in the middle of a Yorkshire winter.

Whittaker said: “This was like four o’clock in the morning, week one, and obviously I was trying to be really cool in front of all the crew and I thought ‘yeah, yeah, I’ll do it; I’ll do it’.”

The BBC has already confirmed South Yorkshire’s prominent role in new series 11, which features the line: “We don’t get aliens in Sheffield.”

New showrunner Chris Chibnall, who also wrote the episode, said: “I lived in the city for a year.

“I knew how cinematic it was but I knew how awesome the people were.

“A load of Sheffield characters felt really fantastic for me.

“It just gives you a different humour and people saying it as it is.”

Gill told the screening Q&A how her role in Dr Who had not yet led to any public recognition and joked about how it had not even had an impact on her mother, who runs a newsagent’s.

She said: “My mam put 60 copies of The Sun out and never said ‘you’re on the front of it’.

“My sister said ‘I’ve just been into the petrol station and you’re on the front cover’.

“She just counted 60 and she doesn’t care. They’re just so unfazed by it.”

Doctor Who returns to BBC One on October 7.