Monday, September 24, 2007

Tamm Lady


Time to ask the original Romana some key questions...

To celebrate 2Entertain's release of the epic Key To Time DVD boxset today, we caught up with Mary Tamm for a chat about Docs, frocks and rocks.

You've been heavily involved in the bonus material for the DVD release. What can you tell us about that?

Well, the DVDs originally came out in America about four years ago and for that we had to sit down in a studio and talk about what we'd remembered. I thought, "I'm never going to manage this," but it's amazing how much comes back. So, having done that once, doing the commentaries on the new ones was a lot easier.

On most of them it's me, Tom and John Leeson - and we'd go off on tangents! We all got on very well, and when you've spent that long working with someone you develop a shorthand. So we do go off on these fantastical tangents from time to time, which do make the DVD commentaries more interesting. Every so often the director would say, "Come on, you've got to get back to Doctor Who now!"

What else can we look forward to on the DVDs?

What they've also done a lot of on-camera interviews - not just with the main artists, but the guest artists too - and I've heard that there's a lot of salacious gossip coming out of those!

They did try to get me to be very chatty and gossipy too, but I stepped into my Romana character and said, "Oh no, I cant possibly talk about that!"

I've also done something which I've very much enjoyed - which is presenting a documentary at the location for The Stones of Blood. They rang me up and said, "Would you be interested in appearing in this little documentary? We're just trying to find a presenter for it..." and I said, "Ooh, this is a good opportunity - why don't I present it? " and they said "Oh, great!"

So I'm presenting the documentary, talking about my time during the filming and talking to four amazing characters who were involved with the history of the Rollright Stones. So that was a first for me, because presenting always looked liked fun. And it is fun, but it's also very hard work!

How did you originally win the role of Romana?

By coincidence my agent also represented George Spenton Foster, who directed my first story (The Ribos Operation). She pushed me very hard to start with.

I wasn't very keen on the idea to start with, but she said, "Look, they've got this character and she's not going to be like the other Doctor Who girls. She's going to be very intelligent, very independent, and on an equal par with the Doctor. That got me interested, so it was those little incentives that made me go for it.

So I saw Graham Williams and George. It was rumoured that there we're 700 girls up for it - I didn't know that there were that many actresses in Equity to be honest! Finally they whittled it down and did screen tests with six of us. That was quite hairy, because it was doing a screen test with Tom.

He was great though, and very nice. He is a larger than life character, and he'd developed this amazing character so I guess I was a little intimidated, but somehow I got the part.

And then we started filming... and that was the hard part! The first couple of studios were a bit nerve-wracking, because I was quite young then and coping with the whole thing was quite difficult. But the work gets you into it and you have a nice rehearsal period - which you don't get nowadays - so the nine months I spent making the series flew by.

What inluenced your decision to move on after only one year?

By the end of it, the character had not developed in quite the way I had been promised, and it was something that I could see quite clearly would not happen. Because it was a half hour format, there's always got to be someone who is like a sounding board for the audience.

If you've got two very strong characters and they we're having their own separate adventures, it just wouldn't work. There's just not the time. And so they had to revert back to the formula of the companion saying, "What's that Doctor?" because then you've got an explanation for the viewers - which is of course what you need.

So that influenced my decision to leave. I was very happy to have done it, and very happy to have been part of TV history.

Were you involved in choosing Romana's fabulous clothes for the series?

I had a huge input into the costumes. I was consulted every step of the way. The first dress that June Hudson design was stunning. We went along to Cilla Black's dressmaker and made six copies of it - all of which disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to them and I swear to god that I haven't got one hanging in my wardrobe! We had quite a few problems with that as it was a very heavy material and would start stretching.

Every so often I would trip over the bottom of the dress so they would have to cut a bit off. And then it would stretch again so they would have to cut another bit off, so it was like the incredible growing dress!

The one I had the most input in, and the one fans most write in about was the one in The Androids of Tara. I had to do a bit of riding in that and the designer had come up with something very tweed looking with dark brown trousers. I said "Ooh, it's summer and I don't want to be running around in tweed... and so I helped design the costume that I wore. I picked the colours for it. I did like that costume as it was more in keeping with the royalty and castles.

Who was your favourite guest star in the Key To Time series?

I particularly adored Philip Madoc, who was in The Power of Kroll. He was great because he speaks so many languages. My background is Eastern European and my parents were refuges. Estonian is my first language, and he was the only other person I'd met in my life that could speak a few words of Estonian. Which was so impressive.

We also had wonderful guests on the Stones of Blood - Beatrix Lehmann and Susan Engle. Listening to Beatrix talking about all her days in the business was wonderful.

Do you think Tom Baker enjoyed playing against a character that was effectively his equal?

I think that Tom really enjoyed the fact that at last he had a kind of feisty assistant. A lot of the fans have commented on the chemistry between us and that it was their favourite series as there was a battle of wits going on.

I think it helped both of us because we played off each other and we worked well together. I know Tom enjoyed it, although he has told people that he found me a bit intimidating! But I like to think that it was Romana he was talking about. We get on very well now and it was lovely seeing him again for the DVDs as we always have a laugh. He's such a fund of funny stories.

Is it true that you rewrote a lot of your dialogue in rehearsals?

We always tweaked the dialogue. As we worked together more and more and as we found we could have a laugh off the set we tried to get a few more laughs in on the set. More humour. We did have the time to do it then. It wouldn't go down well nowadays. We had a week's rehearsal and that's where the creative processes come from. The producers and directors would encourage that as it makes for a richer format.

We hear that you're working on your autobiography...

I can't tell you all the best stories because they're going in the book, but I started on my autobiography two years ago, beginning with my life in Bradford. I've done 20,000 words so far, and I think I need to aim for about 60,000 - but I haven't even left Bradford yet! No, no, I have really, but I haven't got to Doctor Who yet.

I've decided that it's such a rich tapestry (laughs) and that there's such a lot to write about that I'll have to do it in two parts - end part one with Doctor Who and then make part two after that until the present day. But it's going well. Everybody says "How do you remember things?" but I've got diaries going back to when I was five or six years old, and I find that once I start writing it all kind of flows out - which is extraordinary. It's amazing what's in your head that just comes out.

We get asked by a lot of young fans how they can become the Doctor's next companion. What advice would you give them?

The trouble with our business is being in the right place at the right time. If you want a specific thing in the acting world, they're quite elusive. What you have to do is do generally good work and get to the point where your work is being noticed.

When I was at school I wrote to RADA when I was 14 and got back a wonderful letter from the principal saying that you really have to concentrate on English Literature and Drama. The more knowledge you have, the better.

I think this applies to all acting is that you have to portray people, and the more you know about people, the psychology of what makes people tick, the better an actor you'll become.

My advice to any actor is to remain curious about your craft and the world about you. Specifics are dangerous things to go after, because you might be wanting them for the wrong reasons. The thing is to want something because you want to be better at what you do. As an actor, your prime objective is to hone your craft.

You returned to the world of Doctor Who recently with the Gallifrey audio series for Big Finish. What was it like to be back?

I loved doing the audios. It was like a reunion with everybody. Playing the new Romana, who was quite different to the one who'd gone before, was all a big challenge. But they've all come out very well and Gary Russell wrote such wonderful scripts. So it's all been such a wonderful turnaround. I'd never realised all those years ago that I would still be working on it and talking about it. But it's like time travel, it all comes around in a circle and you cant get away with it really.

The Key To time DVD boxset is released by 2Entertain on 24 September 2007.

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