Doctor Who star Nicola Coughlan: 'What a privilege to be part of people's Christmases'

Nicola Coughlan has shared how Ncuti Gatwa helped her to brush up on her Doctor Who knowledge ahead of her guest role in this year’s Christmas special.

Speaking to this week’s Big Issue Christmas special, which is out today (16 December), Coughlan says: “I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted to read the Doctor Who Wikipedia page. But it is like a full encyclopaedia.

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“Then I watched the first two episodes ever made with my brother, who first introduced me to sci-fi through Star Wars, which was our big thing. It gave me a sense that this was proper TV history. So what a privilege to be part of it, and to be part of people’s Christmases.”

Wikipedia could only do so much for Coughlan – it was on set that she really learned the ropes. “If you’re going to get lessons, get them from The Doctor. That’s pretty cool,” she reflects. “It was really fun having Ncuti [Gatwa] be the one who was teaching me about stuff like Mavity.”

The show’s ongoing “Mavity” joke was introduced in last year’s 60^th anniversary specials, when David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor accidentally rewrote history and caused Isaac Newton to misname gravity.

Also in the interview, Coughlan recalls how she was asked by showrunner Russell T Davies to take up the role of Joy in this year’s Christmas special. “He simply said, ‘Come and play with us in Cardiff!’ He’s such a legend. But I said, I know nothing about Doctor Who. I didn’t grow up with it in Ireland. I was very clueless.”

Russell T Davies is similarly full of praise for Coughlan. “You don’t cast Nicola Coughlan,” he tells the Big Issue. “You just close your eyes and hope and pray you’ll get lucky so she shines her light your way. And I got lucky.”

Read the full interview with Nicola Coughlan – and more from Russell T Davies – in this week’s Big Issue. Buy from your local vendor, or if you can’t get to their pitch, show your support by purchasing a Vendor Support Kit at bigissue.com/Christmas.

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