Continuing the press tour for the hotly anticipated upcoming new series of Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker has once again been chatting about her gender – and she continues to be unimpressed with the issue…
Asked on BBC Breakfast whether her gender makes her unqualified for the role of the Doctor – as previously only male actors have occupied the role – Whittaker had this to say: “In arguing about whether I’m qualified or not, that’s a redundant question for me,” she said. “It’s an alien with two hearts so no, I’m not qualified.”
“The Doctor is a character and in such a strange way it’s got so much attention,” she continued. “But my gender plays less of a role in characterisation in this than any other role, like a mother to a son who’s been murdered on a beach. I’m not walking around going, ‘I’m a girl, I’m a girl’, I don’t think about it like that.”
“My gender didn’t play a role in that and in this, I am playing The Doctor. My energy is different. Peter [Capaldi’s] was different to Matt [Smith’s], Matt’s was different to David [Tennant’s], David’s was different to Chris [Eccleston’s].”
She finished by saying, “the point is we all bring something to it and it should be different. Otherwise why else have a role that is regenerated?”
Whittaker’s debut as the Doctor, in ‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’, airs next Sunday at 6:45pm on BBC One.