THE TIMES – “I have no idea what I’m doing,” says Jenna Coleman of making her belated professional stage debut in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. OK, in part this is self- deprecation: the 33-year-old star of three seasons of Victoria, three seasons of Doctor Who and all sorts of other acclaimed television shows over the past ten years is chuckling as she says it. She knows the reviews have been good, knows the show gets standing ovations at the Old Vic every night.

It’s also a sincere suggestion that she feels as if she has been winging it all her professional life. When she was in her teens in Blackpool, beavering away in a touring theatre company set up by an enterprising teacher at her school, she thought she knew how her career would go. Drama school, small parts here and there, a steadily growing confidence and profile to match it. Instead, first she was rejected by drama schools, then she was scooped up for a role in Emmerdale. And Emmerdale led to pretty much uninterrupted, high-profile television work for the next 15 years.