We spoke to Coleman over the phone just after she wrapped filming Victoria for the holidays. Like many of her fans, she’ll be watching Doctor Who‘s Christmas Special, although she won’t appear on screen. “I’ll be sitting with my family watching,” she tells us. “No doubt.”

HALEY WEISS: Has it been emotional to watch your final Doctor Who episodes air?

JENNA COLEMAN: It’s really weird. I went around to Peter [Capaldi]’s house with Steven [Moffat, the show’s writer], Brian [Minchin] our producer, and Mark Gatiss. We all watched [my final episode] together. It’s just great fun and the best thing about Doctor Who is that the storytelling is so epic and huge, and so whimsical and romantic. I always find that even though it’s sci-fi, it’s a fairytale as well. It was lovely to watch it all together, but the goodbye had been in the works for so long. To have it done on screen now, and to no longer have those working relationships that have been a part of my life for four years is quite strange but also exhilarating. It’s been a mad and weird and wonderful part of my life for the last four years, but it feels like the next chapter, in a way, which is great.

WEISS: What will you miss most about playing Clara?

COLEMAN: I’ll mainly miss Peter. [laughs] It’s so rare that you get a show that is effectively a two-hander—it’s you two, all day, every day. Also every day is different, there’s no day that’s the same. Every two weeks you change episodes, you have a different cast, and you go to a different planet. You get to do weird stunts upside down, you play off a green screen, and then suddenly do a really domestic, emotional scene. As an actor, you can go anywhere. There’s not really a limit in that show where you’re stuck to a genre because it’s so changeable and dynamic. It’s that storytelling that I’ll miss the most and Peter, because we spent the best part of two and a half years together. But the show will move forward, as it does, and become something else, which is what makes it so special.

WEISS: How do you think the show changed you as an actor?

COLEMAN: I don’t know the answer to that yet. To be honest, I think it’s the people that you work with who change you the most. I think working with Peter has made me…not be scared of a right and a wrong—trying to do as many options as possible for the edit, exploring as much as possible and throwing ideas in the air and seeing where it takes you.

WEISS: What was your first acting role?

COLEMAN: I did something when I was 10, actually. I did a professional musical. I had to go and sing happy birthday to myself, which was a tough part. I got to leave school early and do the show. It went across the summer for about eight weeks or something like that. That was my first part, and I think that’s probably when I realized that I loved it and it’s what I wanted to do. Then I carried on with my studies and did loads of plays, and then I was 19 when I got my first proper job on a show called Emmerdale where I played the vicar’s niece gone bad. That’s how it all started.