Jodie Whittaker reveals why she kept her own accent for Doctor Who

“There wasn’t a rule that you had to speak a certain way,” the Yorkshire-born actor says

Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor in Doctor Who with a speech bubble

Published: Thursday, 11 January 2018 at 4:03 pm

In the run-up to her first appearance in Doctor Who, there were lots of questions surrounding Jodie Whittaker's new Doctor.

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One of the most prominent queries boiled down to a deceptively simple detail: would she be playing the Time Lord with her native Yorkshire accent?

Of course, when Whittaker did make her debut on Christmas Day this question was definitively answered, with the new Doctor delivering her first words like a true northerner and delighting the majority of fans who had hoped to hear a new voice in the Tardis.

Whittaker has now explained that particular acting choice, which wasn’t a given that previous actors in the lead role (perhaps most prominently Scottish star David Tennant) have adopted other accents in the past.

“All the Doctors’ voices have been different,” Whittaker told Doctor Who Magazine in a new interview.

“There have been various dialects, and I knew coming into it that there wasn’t a rule that you had to speak a certain way. I auditioned in my accent, and at no point did anyone say to do anything different. In fact they said, ‘Use your own voice.’”

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While Whittaker said she’d have been happy enough to play the role with another voice, the production team seemed happy with what she was doing and the accent stayed.

“Obviously anyone who’s seen me knows that this isn’t the only voice I’m comfortable doing,” she said.

“If it hadn’t worked during the scenes in the audition process I’m sure they would have picked up on that immediately. So in a strange way I don’t know how much of an actual decision it was…I think it happened before I was even cast.”

Lots of planets have a North, as we all know – and once again, it seems like Gallifrey is one of them.

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Doctor Who returns to BBC1 this Christmas, while the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine is on sale now

Authors

Radio Times commissioning editor Huw Fullerton. He sits in front of a shelving unit, looking at the camera and smiling. He wears glasses and has a moustache

Huw FullertonCommissioning editor

Huw Fullerton is a commissioning editor for Radio Times magazine handling comedy, entertainment and specialist drama. In a previous regeneration, he covered all things sci-fi and fantasy for RadioTimes.com.

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