Doctor Who: Velile Tshabalala

The first thing Velile Tshabalala did when she found out that she'd been given the part of Rosita, the Doctor's companion in next week's Doctor Who Christmas special (BBC1), was to call her dad. "Our family, we're like a sitcom," she laughs. "I went, Dad, I've got Doctor Who. I had a really croaky voice because I'd been out with friends the night before, and he thought I was ill. He said, 'What doctor have you seen? What's happened? What's the matter?'"
Thankfully, the Tshabalalas have little to worry about when it comes to the health of their daughter's acting career. Velile's (pronounced Veh-lee-lah) first acting job was playing the teenage waitress Kareesha in the CBBC sitcom Kerching! Then in 2006 she joined BBC3's comedy sketch show Tittybangbang. Now, on Christmas Day, she'll appear opposite David Tennant in his penultimate Christmas special before he leaves the show in early 2010.
Set on Christmas Eve 1851, the episode features a legion of menacing Cybermen as well as Dervla Kirwan as the Doctor's foe, Miss Hartigan. Tshabalala, 24, features as the Doctor's companion, Rosita, in a corset, and a wig that made her, she says, "look like Gloria Gaynor".
As though stepping into the shoes of Kylie Minogue and Catherine Tate, the Doctor's previous two Christmas companions, weren't challenging enough, Tshabalala will also assist not one but two Doctors. The Christmas special stars David Morrissey as the "next Doctor", a rival Time Lord claiming to be "simply the Doctor, the one, the only, and the best".
Rosita, Tshabalala's character, initially assists Morrissey's Doctor, but soon comes to admire Tennant's. She remains resolute before them both, though. "I might be smaller than them," she says, "but I give them what for." Russell T Davies, the show's writer, says that Tshabalala is "lovely", and echoes her description of Rosita's role opposite the two Doctors: "Her character's probably cleverer than the two of them put together." Tshabalala adds that Rosita came quite naturally to her: "She's quite close to home, a feisty cockney girl."
Born in Whitechapel, east London, Tshabalala's cockney roots are practically gold-plated. Her father, a mechanical engineer, and her mother, a health visitor, are from Zimbabwe and moved to London in 1972. "I'm from a typical African family and all my cousins are doctors and teachers," she says. "So when I said I wanted to be an actress you can imagine they weren't too pleased."
Tshabalala's parents, though, happily encouraged Velile's acting career on the condition she completed her exams. From the age of 14, she attended weekend classes at London's Sylvia Young Theatre School. Although before she got professional acting work she'd been cleaning lavatory cubicles to supplement her income, it felt like perfect showbusiness timing that Velile got the call to say she had a part in Kerching! on the day she finished her A-levels. "Always listen to your mum and dad," she smiles in acknowledgment of her parents' foresight.
When she heard she'd won the role in Doctor Who a few years later she admits she was daunted stepping in to such a hallowed, long-running series: "I was petrified." And she was fairly star-struck when she first met David Tennant. "I was trying to act really cool," she recalls, "but I phoned my mum and said, 'Mum, David Tennant just gave me a hug!'"
On set, she noted Tennant's tireless energy before each take, although his current back troubles may have put paid to such capers for the time being. "He'd be standing there jogging on the spot, doing star jumps, and I'd be thinking, you're making me feel like a lazy so-and-so. Even at four in the morning, he's still got that energy." Did David Morrissey do star jumpsto get into character, too? "God, no," she says. "He'd ruin his suit."
Tshabalala thinks Morrissey would make a dapper replacement for Tennant. "He's so dashing and charming," she says. Tantalisingly, though, there's still no confirmation of whether Morrissey will assume the Doctor's mantle. And like him, Tshabalala doesn't know whether she'll be returning for more Doctor Who adventures. "I wanted this part so much," she says. "Whatever happens after is a bonus."