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Freema Agyemann profile
Playing Rose Tyler made Billie Piper the nation's darling - so it must have been pretty daunting for Freema Agyeman to take her place in the Tardis. Just how did Freema manage to land the coveted role of Doctor's companion, and did she ever feel like hiding behind a sofa when faced with all those awful monsters?
Freema's background is as exotic and unique as her name: her father is from Ghana and her mother from Iran (which explains why Freema has an Iranian word - baha, meaning "free" - tattooed on her arm). Brought up with her siblings Domenic and Leila in the bustling Finsbury Park area of London, Freema exhibited her talent from early childhood.
In fact, she was so dedicated to the idea of becoming an actor that she attended a theatre school in her teenage years before going onto study performing arts at Middlesex University. She was a promising student, but she knew how tough it would be to make it as a performer in the real world...
The intrepid actor
After university, Freema entered a phase that's grimly familiar to just about every film and TV star in the world: endless auditions, eternal optimism and nailbiting waits by the phone. Making ends meet by working in a DVD rental shop, she kept attending those auditions until the big break came in 2003. She was offered a role in Crossroads.The soap may have been on its last legs, but it gave Freema her first taste of the limelight. Indeed, she was even nominated for the highly coveted title of Sexiest Female in that year's What's On TV magazine awards – beside which the Oscars frankly pale into insignificance. (This is not strictly true.)
Doctor Death
Following Crossroads, Freema bagged parts in Casualty, Silent Witness and The Bill (in which she turned up twice, playing two separate characters). As her credits grew, so did her profile – which led to the life-changing moment she was invited to star in Doctor Who.Not as Martha, mind. She actually made her original appearance on the series as a character named Adeola in the story Army of Ghosts. Adeola is a member of the Torchwood staff who becomes enslaved by the Cybermen and actually ends up being killed by the Doctor himself. (After Freema was cast as Martha, the writers explained away their similarity by establishing Adeola as Martha's cousin.) Clever, clever.
From Freema to Martha
Adeola was only a minor character, but it gave Freema enough space to show off her talents. It certainly worked, as not long after shooting Army of Ghosts, Freema's agent called her to say that the producers wanted her to audition again – this time for a regular part in the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood. Or so they said.A series of auditions was called for, and she had to miss the second one due to illness. A very gutted Freema was convinced it would cost her the part, but things turned out better than she could ever have imagined. Not only did the producers like her, but they had actually been auditioning her for the part of the Doctor's new companion all along. And so it happened that a very flabbergasted Freema became intrepid trainee doctor Martha Jones.
Method acting (accidentally)
Since becoming a part of the Doctor Who family, Freema has discovered that Method acting comes naturally when you're playing a companion. By which we mean to say, you get actually do get terrified when those monsters come at you."I genuinely am scared when I'm being pursued," she confesses. "The adrenaline's pumping, your heart's running and there really are monsters coming up behind you. I was so scared when the rhino creatures were chasing us in the Smith and Jones episode that I actually screamed when I wasn't supposed to."
And it wasn't just that episode that spooked her. In a later story, Freema got so carried away trying to lock some rampaging cannibals out of a room that she ended up bruising the whole of her arm. Perhaps the producers should provide her with a sofa on set to hide behind. Just a thought.
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