Jodie Whittaker convinced she was 'doing Doctor Who wrong' when she started

Jodie Whittaker has described her crisis that she was 'doing Doctor Who wrong', after she took over from Peter Capaldi.

Whittaker, who became the series' first female doctor in 2018, the thirteenth actor to take on the role, says she had purposely not watched Capaldi's take on the character.

Speaking to Guy Garvey on 6Music, she said that she wanted to give a 'fresh perspective', but on seeing the Christmas episode Twice Upon A Time in 2017, in which Capaldi regenerates into her doctor, she panicked.

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“When I saw the episode, where Peter’s [Capaldi] Doctor regenerates into myself, we were midway through shooting and that was the first time in a long time that I’d been watching it. I hadn’t watched it to try and give myself that freedom to step on set,” she said.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve done it wrong. I’ve done it wrong’ and we were only like six weeks in and I had seven months left. I came in to work I was like, ‘You should have told me, I’ve been doing it wrong!’

“They said, ‘No, this is the point,’ like, ‘You know, you aren’t supposed to be doing what someone else did’. But all the energy of the Doctor and all the references and the Whovian kind of pearls are in there. And you then take it and run with it. And actually it’s much more freeing.”

Doctor Who wound up its 12th series in March this year, with its tenth episode The Timeless Children, in which Whittaker's Doctor was arrested by the Judoon, and teleported to a prison asteroid.

Filming for the 13th series is scheduled to start next month, though there are potential for delays due to the ongoing challenges of shooting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The series tend to take 10 months to shoot, meaning that the show will likely return towards the end of 2021.

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