10 Times Doctor Who Lied To Your Face
2. Nicola Bryant's American Accent
It won't shock anyone to discover that Nicola Bryant isn't actually an American – she just played one in Doctor Who. However, the show went to some extraordinary lengths to hide this fact from the public during the 1980s.
Producer John Nathan-Turner was keen that an American Doctor Who companion would appeal to a transatlantic audience, and so Bryant was told to keep up the façade of being American throughout promotion and production of the show.
In other words, she had to fake an American accent everywhere, even outside of filming – Bryant later described it as "the longest role I've ever played".
Her accent didn't fool everyone though. In Totally Tasteless, Richard Marson's fantastic biography of John Nathan-Turner, Peter Davison recalls hearing Bryant's accent for the first time:
"You could obviously tell her accent wasn't very good, and it was clear to me as, at the time, I was married to an American. I was very aware that the Americans would not buy into it."
Eventually, it was Colin Baker who revealed to the press that Bryant was English and not American, in an interview after he left the show. The furore around Baker's sacking (and the fact that Bryant had already moved on) meant that the 'big reveal' didn't make much of an impact.