THE DWM INTERVIEW

ANJLI MOHINDRA talks to EMILY COOK about returning to Doctor Who - and the challenges of playing the Queen Skithra in Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror.

Anjli Mohindra

Anjli Mohindra as Rani Chandra in the fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures (2010).

Rani is taken over by an alien in The Vault of Secrets (2010).

Anjli Mohindra isn’t new to the Doctor Who universe. Between 2008 and 2011 she played Rani Chandra in the much-loved spin-offseries The Sarah Jane Adventures. “It was at that point that I became a Who fan and fell a bit in love with it all,” says Anjli. “So to be asked to do an episode of Doctor Who was very exciting because I wasn’t sure it would ever happen.”

Anjli guest-starred in Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror as the Queen Skithra, an extraterrestrial scorpion scavenger. “When I got the call for Doctor Who I had a sneaking suspicion that I might be playing an alien because it’s a way of being able to be involved in Doctor Who without there being a direct connection to The Sarah Jane Adventures.”

Playing an alien was a new experience for Anjli. “There was one episode of Sarah Jane [2010’s The Vault of Secrets] where I got taken over by an alien and sort of became that alien for a few minutes. But in terms of a physical transformation, that’s a world I was very unfamiliar with.