Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker says she felt 25 again playing the Time Lord ahead of her last episode
Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker has said that she felt reconnected with her younger self playing the iconic Time Lord on the BBC show.
Whittaker, 40, said the role “knocked 15 years off”, ahead of her final appearance as the Doctor in feature-length episode The Power of The Doctor, which airs on Sunday October 23.
The actress praised the part for enabling her to access more positive emotions, after being cast in “emotionally traumatic” roles, like that of grieving mother Beth Latimer in Broadchurch.
Whittaker told The Mirror: “You don’t realise how much that emotional trauma leaves you on the edge of upset when you’re doing it for 12-hour days.
“With Doctor who, there was heartbreak, there was fear and there was loss, my overriding emotion was excitement.
“That fed into my evening and my weekend and my year, I feel like it’s knocked 15 years off me because I’ve been so energised!”
Whittaker broke ground as the first woman to play the Doctor back in 2017, and now hands the character onto Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa, who is the first black actor to take on the role.
A trailer for Whittaker’s last outing as the Time Lord premiered on Saturday and promised an action-packed, crazy adventure, as the Doctor fights the Daleks and Cybermen in a laser beam battle as they attempt to take over Earth.
The Power of The Doctor will air as part of BBC’s 100th Anniversary celebrations and it’s been hinted that in the episode, Tegan and Ace will return in a decades-long awaited reunion with the Doctor, ahead of her facing The Master.
Speaking on the upcoming episode, Whittaker told Empire: “It’s got all the iconic things that you associate with Doctor Who. It’s massive.”
Addressing her last time onscreen as the Doctor, she confessed: “I cannot talk about it without crying. When I could see the crew was happy with that last shot, that’s when my bottom lip started going.
“I was like, ‘Well, they can’t say they need another take now because I’ve f***ing lost it!’”
Doctor Who is in for an eventful series as Gatwa makes his debut in the role next year.
Falling on the show’s 60th anniversary, viewers can expect to see the return of former Doctor David Tennant, as well as his companion Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate.
The Power of the Doctor airs on Sunday at 7:30pm on BBC One.
