Jenna Coleman

Jenna-Louise Coleman born 27 April 1986, credited since 2013 as Jenna Coleman, is an English actress. She is best known for roles such as Jasmine Thomas in the soap opera Emmerdale, Clara Oswald in the science-fiction series Doctor Who, Queen Victoria in the period drama Victoria, Joanna Lindsay in the mystery drama The Cry and Marie-Andrée Leclerc in the crime miniseries The Serpent.

Early life

Jenna-Louise Coleman was born in Blackpool on 27 April 1986, the daughter of Karen and Keith Coleman. She has an older brother named Ben. Her grandmother named her partially after the Dallas character Jenna Wade. She attended Arnold School in Blackpool, where she was head girl. While at school, she was a member of the theatre company In Yer Space, with whom she performed in the play Crystal Clear at the Edinburgh Festival. She won an award for her performance, and the play was also received favourably. She was offered a place to study English at the University of York, but turned it down in order to accept the role of Jasmine Thomas in the soap opera Emmerdale.

Career

2005–2012: Soap breakthrough and other projects

Coleman landed the part of Jasmine Thomas in Emmerdale in 2005. At the British Soap Awards 2007, she was nominated for the “Best Newcomer” award, and at the National Television Awards 2006, she was nominated for the “Most Popular Newcomer” award. At the 2009 British Soap Awards, she was nominated for the “Best Actress”, “Sexiest Female”, and “Best Dramatic Performance” awards. She received a nomination for the “Best Actress” award from the TV Choice Awards. In May 2009, it was announced that Coleman would be joining BBC school-based drama series, Waterloo Road, as “hard girl” Lindsay James. As she was 23 at the time of her casting, Coleman found the experience of playing a schoolgirl “surreal”.

In December 2010, it was announced that Coleman would be playing Susan Brown in a BBC Four television adaptation of the John Braine novel Room at the Top. The adaptation was originally intended to air in April 2011, but this was cancelled due to a rights dispute between the production company and Braine’s estate. The dispute was resolved by 2012, and the show aired in two parts on 26 and 27 September 2012. In 2011, she made her feature film debut with a small role in Captain America: The First Avenger. She also got the role of Annie Desmond in Julian Fellowes’ four part mini-series Titanic, describing her character as a “cheeky little Cockney” and “the Eliza Doolittle of the ship”.

Coleman provided the voice for Princess Melia Antiqua in the English dub of the 2010 video game Xenoblade Chronicles and subsequently reprised her role for the 2020 Definite Edition remake’s epilogue: Future Connected. In 2012, Coleman was cast as Rosie in Stephen Poliakoff’s original drama series Dancing on the Edge, which follows the fortunes of a black jazz band in the 1930s. The show aired on BBC Two in February 2013. She starred as Lydia Wickham in the adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley. The three episodes were shown on BBC One during Christmas 2013.

2012–2016: Doctor Who

On 21 March 2012, Doctor Who producer Steven Moffat confirmed at a press conference that Coleman would play the companion of the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith). Moffat chose her for the role because she worked the best alongside Smith and could talk faster than he could. She auditioned for the role in secret, under the pretence of auditioning for Men on Waves (an anagram for “Woman Seven”: she would first appear in the show’s seventh series).

Although originally announced as beginning her run as companion in the Christmas special in 2012, Coleman made a surprise appearance on 1 September 2012 in the first episode of the seventh series as Oswin Oswald, a guest character. Coleman subsequently debuted as a series regular in the Christmas special episode “The Snowmen” as Victorian governess and barmaid Clara Oswin Oswald. In that episode, Coleman also played a third version of the character, a resident of twenty-first-century London named simply Clara Oswald. Beginning in “The Bells of Saint John”, this version begins her travels as the Doctor’s regular companion, including after his regeneration into the Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, in the 2013 Christmas special episode “The Time of the Doctor.” In the 2014 Christmas special episode “Last Christmas”, it was revealed that Coleman would remain in the role of Clara for Series 9. However, the ninth series was her last, as Coleman had decided to leave the show to take on a role as Queen Victoria in an ITV production. In “The Zygon Invasion” and “The Zygon Inversion”, Coleman also played the role of Bonnie, the Zygon leader who took the form of Clara Oswald. She returned to the show for Twelfth Doctor’s last episode “Twice Upon a Time” where she made a cameo appearance; that episode, Doctor Who‘s 2017 Christmas special, aired the same evening as the first Christmas special for Victoria. She was first credited on screen as Jenna Coleman in Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor, which aired on 4 August 2013.

2016–present: Victoria and other projects

In 2016, Coleman starred in ITV’s eight-part drama following the reign of the British monarch and Empress of India, Queen Victoria. The actress confessed that she was not totally informed about Victorian history, but researched the role. When interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Coleman expressed her admiration for the monarch. She argues that this role meant she was able to break out of her supposed ‘box’ as a northern working-class character that Emmerdale put her in. Victoria premiered on 28 August 2016 on ITV, and in September 2016, ITV renewed Victoria for a second series. A Christmas special for 2017 was also commissioned and a third series was announced in December 2017.

In December 2017, it was announced that Coleman would be the narrator for a Royal Caribbean UK advertising campaign. On 8 January 2018, Coleman was confirmed to play Joanna in the four-part BBC drama The Cry, an adaptation of the 2013 novel by Helen FitzGerald.

In September 2018, the Old Vic Theatre announced on their website that Coleman would star in a new production of All My Sons in 2019, which ran from 13 April to 8 June 2019 and included a cinema screening via National Theatre Live on 14 May 2019. In February 2019, it was announced that Coleman would make a guest appearance in an episode from series five of the dark comedy series Inside No. 9, with an expected broadcast date later in the year. Series five returned to the screen on 3 February 2020.

On 11 May 2019, in an interview with Graham Norton on his BBC Radio 2 program, Coleman indicated her intent to return to Victoria for a fourth series should it be renewed by ITV, but stated that the show will be taking “a bit of a breather” before production resumes. On 9 September 2019, it was announced that Coleman had been cast as Marie-Andrée Leclerc in the Netflix and BBC drama The Serpent, a dramatisation of the life of convicted serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Production of The Serpent began in Bangkok in September 2019 and continued into 2020, with an expected BBC broadcast later in the year. As with most other film and television production, work on The Serpent was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming resumed on 17 August in the UK and was completed on 28 August. Due to the delay in filming, the broadcast date for The Serpent was moved to 2021. It premiered on 1 January 2021 on BBC One.

During the pandemic, it was announced that Coleman would participate in The Remote Read, a planned series of online drama performances to raise funds for theatrical workers left unemployed by the pandemic. The first production under this banner, an adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s A Separate Peace (1966), was transmitted via the Zoom platform on 2 May 2020. Coleman also recorded the short story Pressures, Residential by Philip Hensher, in support of UNICEF UK, as well as The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter, as part of a collection of audiobooks in Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales.

Nine years after its original English release, Coleman reprised her role as Melia in the video game Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition which features a brand new epilogue taking place after the main story.

On 19 February 2021, Coleman was announced to have been cast in the dark comedy Klokkenluider, Dutch for ‘whistleblower’. Filming is scheduled to begin on 28 February in East Sussex, for a three week shoot in a COVID-secure “bubble”.

Charity work

Coleman has been involved with charity work in South Africa raising awareness of HIV with One To One Children’s Fund, for which she is an ambassador. She is also an ambassador for Place2Be, a charity providing emotional and therapeutic services in schools. Coleman has also regularly supported Comic Relief and Red Nose Day.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011	Captain America: The First Avenger	Connie
2016	Me Before You	Katrina Clark
2019	Corporate Monster	Ellen	Short film
TBA	Klokkenluider	Silke	Pre-production

Key

Denotes films that have not yet been released

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
2005–2009	Emmerdale	Jasmine Thomas	Series regular
2009	Waterloo Road	Lindsay James	Recurring role
2012	Titanic	Annie Desmond	Recurring role
2012	Room at the Top	Susan Brown	Television film
2012–2015, 2017	Doctor Who	Clara Oswald	Main role (Series 7–9), 2017 Special; 38 episodes
2013	Dancing on the Edge	Rosie Williams	Recurring role
2013	The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot	Herself	Doctor Who comedy spoof for the 50th Anniversary special
2013	Death Comes to Pemberley	Lydia Wickham	Main role
2016	Thunderbirds Are Go	Baines	Voice role; episode: “Earthbreaker”
2016–2019	Victoria	Queen Victoria	25 episodes
2018	The Cry	Joanna Lindsay	Main role
2020	Inside No. 9	Beattie	Episode: “Death Be Not Proud”
2021	The Serpent	Marie-Andrée Leclerc	Main role

Stage

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
1996	Summer Holiday	Bridesmaid
2004	Crystal Clear	Thomasina	In Yer Space
2009	Jack and the Beanstalk	Princess Apricot	Theatre Royal, Nottingham
2019	All My Sons	Ann Deever	Old Vic Theatre
2020	A Separate Peace	Nurse Maggie Coates	Virtual play; broadcast online

Video games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2010	Xenoblade Chronicles	Princess Melia Antiqua	English dub
2015	Lego Dimensions	Clara Oswald	Main game and Doctor Who expansion
2020	Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition	Princess Melia Antiqua	English dub, includes new “Future Connected” epilogue

Audio

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
2013	The Secret Garden	Narrator	Abridged reading
2013	Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctor	Alice Watson / Eleventh Doctor	Episode: “The Time Machine”
2016	A Christmas Carol	Belle	Digital release
2020	Pressures, Residential	Narrator	In aid of UNICEF UK
2020	Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales	Narrator	Episode: “The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies”