Trust Me writer heard about Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who role at “the same time as everybody else”
Series creator Dan Sefton had originally hoped Jodie Whittaker would reprise her role
The second series of BBC1's medical thriller Trust Me features a brand new cast and premise – but it seems that wasn't always the plan...
In an interview with RadioTimes.com, series creator Dan Sefton revealed that he had originally mapped out a second season following Jodie Whittaker's imposter medic – until he discovered that his leading actor would be rather busy saving the universe as the Thirteenth Doctor.
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Asked when he found out about Whittaker's Doctor Who casting – which was unveiled after the 2017 Wimbledon final – Sefton said: "The same time as everybody else. I remember exactly where I was because it was the match at Wimbledon ,wasn't it? And I was watching the announcement – I remember when she walked out of the Tardis, and I was like, 'it's f***ing her, Jesus!'
"I texted Nicola [Shindler, of Red Production Company], like, 'Did you know?' I didn't know. I was kind of numb. It was like, 'Oh. Now what happens?' But you know, good luck to her."
Sefton also revealed that he had planned to pitch a second season of Trust Me, with Whittaker reprising her role as nurse-turned-fake-doctor Cath Hardacre.
"Obviously you plan it, even when you're in the middle of writing your first one," he said. "You always have to plan what could happen, so with Nicola Shindler and I, we'd thought about it, and we were ready to go with a pitch about how it could continue. And then, of course, when Jodie was Doctor Who... we realised there was no way she'd be available.
"So, then it was, like, what else could we do? And then actually out of those problems come opportunities.
"We went back to the BBC and to Gaynor [Holmes, Head of Drama for BBC Scotland], and said, 'Look we've got an idea for a completely different story, but the same kind of style and psychological' — and we pitched her this idea and she said, 'That sounds great', so we worked it up and then luckily the BBC said, 'Yeah, let’s do that'.
"So it was a shame on one hand," he added, "because Jodie was fantastic, we could have done some more potentially, but that's the way that we were".
Instead the new series of Trust Me stars Alfred Enoch (Harry Potter) as Corporal Jamie McCain, a temporarily paralysed soldier recovering from a spinal injury, who starts to investigate a string of mysterious deaths on the ward of his Glasgow hospital.
Trust Me starts on Tuesday 16th April on BBC1 at 9pm
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