MAUREEN O’BRIEN HAD NO DESIRE to star in Doctor Who. She was already perfectly happy performing at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, thank you very much.
“It didn’t sound like much cop. I wasn’t interested,” she tells SFX. Indeed, she had little interest in television, full stop. “We didn’t have a television in the house when I was a kid. It just meant nothing. The only thing that mattered to me was theatre. That was where my life was going to be. I didn’t take television seriously at all.”
Nevertheless, she was encouraged to apply for the role of Vicki by her teacher at the Central School of Speech and Drama. A reluctant audition for producer Verity Lambert followed, and she was offered the job.
O’Brien accepted for one reason: she’d be closer to her London-based partner, Michael. Unfortunately, a darker side to her newfound fame soon revealed itself.
“Suddenly I had journalists calling me, camped outside, banging on the window and shouting, talking to the neighbours – ‘Have you ever seen her, what does she look
