The Doctor Who crew was excited to present their new companion Jenna-Louise Coleman to the world last week but the actress herself was just relieved. It meant she didn’t have to lie anymore. Read on to see just how difficult it was for her and find out what her secret codename was. Yes, she had a secret codename!

Coleman had to keep the secret of her casting for six whole weeks after she was chosen. She is a stronger woman than I, that’s for sure. She told the Radio Times, “I wasn’t allowed to say that it was Doctor Who at any point. Not talking to my agent, not when I arrived at the audition, and I certainly couldn’t tell anyone at all what I was up to next.”

But the creators wanted to help her out at least a little, so they told her to tell people she auditioned for a show titled Men on Waves. Can you figure it out the significance of that title? Coleman did.

“When she was auditioning, Karen Gillan had been given a codename—Panic Moon, which is an anagram of Companion,” said Coleman, “so I worked out that Men on Waves is an anagram of Woman Seven, because this is the seventh series. Weirdly, seven is my lucky number and this is my seventh job.”

Coleman said keeping the secret of her audition and subsequent job was especially difficult to keep from the three schoolfriends she lives with. “With girl politics the way they are, I couldn’t tell just one friend,” she said. “I had to phone one of them on the way to the press conference to tell her that I’d borrowed her shoes, in case she saw them in photos.”

But if you think Coleman has all the secrets you’d like to know about her character, think again.

“I have an idea of the story, of the character and of a few surprises, but I don’t know her name or where she’s from,” she said. “I just told Steven [Moffat] and [producer] Caroline Skinner ‘Don’t tell me anything until I need to know it.'”

(via Blastr)

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