Karen: My Time Has Come

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Publication: Belfast Telegraph
Date: 2012-09-29
Author: Craig McLean
Page: 18
Language: English

As she prepares to bid farewell to her role as Dr Who's feisty sidekick this evening, actress Karen Gillan tells Craig McLean about what's next in her busy career

It was one of those unavoidable kinks in the space-time continuum, and no amount of tinkering with a screwdriver, sonic or otherwise, could fix it. Karen Gillan had suddenly beamed on to planet Earth (well, Carnaby Street, in central London) from a distant galaxy (ok, Inverness in the Highlands). There was talk of an imminent and long-term self-imposed exile to an inhospitable alien landscape where human life forms have been known to take on strange new shapes (that is, she's relocating to Los Angeles).

Thus, she was immediately available for interview— just at the point where the school holidays had gone all Tardis-like and seemed much bigger from the inside.

To wit: I had a childcare crunch, and had no option but to make like a Time Lord and call on the help of a redoubtable and willing female assistant. In other words, I turned my 10-year-old into a redoubtable female assistant and brought her along to meet the actress who tonight makes her swansong as Doctor Who's estimable companion.

Accordingly, I thought I'd let my child speak for the nationwide raging enthusiasm for this titan of Saturday-night telly, and have first stab at talking to one of the heroines du pop-cultural jour.

And, demonstrating the flaming copper-top enthusiasm that has made her a hit on Whovian message-boards, at fan conventions, and on telly for the past two-and-a-half years — and also demonstrating a honking, toothy laugh that was perhaps less well-known — Gillen took to the task like an Ood to lightbulb&

She is, readers might be reassured to know, great with kids. She might be newly single, currently homeless and in fact devoid of most material possessions. But come the day when Gillen is maternally inclined, she'll be a natural mum. Perhaps because she radiates megawatt childlike enthusiasm herself Little wonder, perhaps, that, with three series under her belt, she's been the longest-lasting companion of the show's modem era, beating Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate.

So, folding her leggy legs into a dark comer of a deserted cabaret-cum-freakshow club, the 24-yearold better known as Amy Pond eagerly took a couple of opening questions from a young fan.

In Doctor Who, Amy's quite feisty — are you as feisty?

"I've got to be honest — I don't think that I'm quite as feisty as the character. So that's why it's really ftm doing the programme, because I get to be this person that I sort of Wish I could be like, hall hah! Amy's what I would like to be like in real life. But I'm a bit more scared of things than she is, generally."

Some of the episodes are really scary — do you get scared when you're filming them?

"Sometimes I genuinely get realty, really scared. Do you know the monsters the Weeping Angels? Well they freak me out so much, cos they're just like, Aaarrrgh. They're so freaky, aren't they? And they're coming back in the new series, in a big way. They're actually in the last episode I'm gonna be in. So that was really scary."

Profusely thanking my pretty young assistant, I promptly beam her to a far-off planet, a deserted former mining colony with a mysteriously pulsating core that's been sending out SOS signals for millennia. Well, to a sweetshop round the corner.

When we talk, the premiere of season has seven of the new-era Doctor Who is a couple of weeks away. The departure of Amy Pond, and of her screen husband Rory (played by Arthur Darvill), is due to happen four weeks after that, in the fifth and final episode of this opening instalment of the latest series.

Episode six is being broadcast at Christmas, and will introduce the new lady sidekick brought in by executive producer Steven Moffat to console and re-energise both Matt Smith — the 11th Doctor — and the hit drama's huge fanbase. She's Jenna-Louise Coleman, best known, perhaps, as Jasmine Thomas in Emmerdale and last seen going down with Julian Fellowes' Titanic on ITV in the spring.

As regular Who-viewers may have spotted, Moffat has tweaked the new series. Perhaps mindful of the criticisms levelled at the show after the departure of previous showrunner Russell T Davies — Doctor Who became a bit complicated, even for grown-ups (or was that just me?) — this time round the telly exec instructed his writers to craft big, bold, stand-alone episodes.

"Amy and Rory are in a really interesting place in their relationship:' says Gillan of the screen earthling couple whose sleepy village life was turned on its bead by the Man from Gallifrey.

"Over the first four episodes they resolve that, so they're in quite a good place by that point, and they'll have been on some serious adventures. Because, basically, they're five movie-scale, epic episodes," she says eagerly, nudging any catch-up viewers to get busy with the iPlayer sharpish. "And they're all stand-alone stories but they're all leading up to this departure."

The hugely popular Gillan's leaving Doctor Who has been reported as a "mutual decision". How so?

"I honestly wanted to go on my gut instinct with the whole leaving thing, and I just had a rough idea of when would be a good time for me to go 'cos I wanted to go on a high. I didn't want to stay in it too long and outstay my welcome. And I wanted to take the character as far as possible before it started getting a little tired."

Gillan says she approached Moffat during the filming of her second series, around 2010, and told him when she thought would be the most opportune moment for her character to depart.

"So I've known for so long — it's just this massive relief now that I can actually talk about it."

"So," she concludes, "it was completely mutual, which was lovely, cos then I didn't have to sit through an awful meeting where I'm getting told I'm going!"

Again Gillan's laugh explodes from her mouth. It's a marvellous, charming, expressive, uninhibited bray, her nose wrinkling and her top teeth jutting over her bottom teeth. It is, whisper it, a bit goofy.

And it's along way from the cool beauty that gave her a modelling career before she broke into acting. And from the statuesque chic that has made her a regular in glossy fashion magazines since her Doctor Who debut in 2010. Those pins, showcased to memorable effect (and to some Middle England consternation) via the mini-skirted costume of a sexy policewoman in her first episode, have served her well.

Anyway, she knew when enough was enough. Filming Doctor Who occupies nine months of the year, with Gillan and Smith bunkered in Wales — Cardiff being production HQ, — for most of the time.

"It just completely consumes your entire life," she says of a show that, since its revival seven years ago (with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper in the key roles), has become a flagship of BBC programming and a powerhouse British production internationally, notably in the US. "You eat, sleep and breathe it — and I'm not exaggerating. It's just all day, every day. So, yeah, a demanding job.

"As an actress, Amy Pond has been the most amazing character to play," she affirms. "But I still want to go and do different things. So that was on my mind as well."

At the time of our meeting, Gillan has just finished shooting a romcom in Glasgow, Not Another Happy Ending (she plays a successful author suffering from writer's block). The director is John McKay, who also directed We'll Take Manhattan, the Jean Shrimpton/David Bailey biopic in which she also starred. She's brimming with enthusiasm for her time working in the city, and sings the praises of her handsome French co-star Stanley Weber.

As of this week, after she exits, stage-left, the Doctor Who universe, Karen Gillan will be in Alabama. She's making a supernatural thriller called Oculus, about a mirror with strange powers. She plays an auctioneer (I thought it'd be interesting how she talks and stuff') investigating, alongside her brother, the mysterious death of their parents.

Immediately after that, she's LA-bound. Is she planning on basing herself there because she's in hot pursuit of Hollywood opportunities? "Good-quality movies would be the goal for me," she demurs, "things that I feel passionate about. I don't believe in working for the sake of working. I'd rather not work than do bad stuff."

But before all that, there's the matter of her other leave-taking. Karen Gillan's Doctor Who finale was largely shot in New York She can't say much about the specifics of her departure, other than that there were crowds of screaming fans swarming the Central Park set.

Was filming the climactic scenes emotional?

"Yeah," she nods soberly. "I didn't hold it together for the full two weeks that we were shooting that episode — I was crying at anything! — not even sad things. So when it came to shoot the final scenes, everything that's on the screen is real!" Real tears and real snot? "Yeah!" honks Gillan "it's not very glamorous."

After her Glasgow filming and before this London stopover, Karen Gillan popped to Scotland to see her mum and dad, and to get her washing done. "Yeah, exactly!" she laughs. "I actually did do that."

While at home for her overnight stay Gillan slept in her old room, in her old single bed, with her old decorations still on the walls and ceiling. "It's just a really funny thought having all these crazy experiences on Doctor Who, then always seeming to end up back in my old childhood bedroom, with my childhood posters— a Muse one, from when I was like an angsty teen. And then there's loads of theatre programmes all over the ceiling. All my Barbies have been put in the loft, though.

"But! lie there and I am like, has all that just really happened? Or did I just imagine it?"

Dr Who, BBC1, tonight, 7.20pm

Caption: TIME TO GO: Gillan set her sights on LA and (left) her replacement as Doctor Who's sidekick, Jenna-Louise Coleman

Caption: WHO'S THAT GIRL? Gillan in that skirt (left) in her first episode and in her final show tonight

Karen Gillan's rise to stardom

Karen Gillan was born and brought up an only child in Inverness, Scotland
After taking part in several local youth theatre groups and school productions she went on to study at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts drama school in London
She spent some time as a model, including at London Fashion Week, but said acting was always her main goal
She enjoyed roles in the comedy series The Kevin Bishop Show as well as Channel 4's Stacked before landing the role of Doctor Who's companion, Amy Pond, in 2009

Karen: My Time Has Come

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