Inside Jenna Coleman’s rise from ‘anxious wreck’ on Emmerdale to small-screen royalty as she prepares to become a mum
SHE has time-travelled with the Doctor, ruled Britain as Victoria and is now dazzling on our screens playing an ace detective.
But Jenna Coleman says that despite her glittering career, she struggled to overcome inner demons in order to shine on stage and screen.
The 38-year-old reveals that in her early twenties when working on Emmerdale, Waterloo Road and Doctor Who, she was an “anxious wreck” on set, dreading the spotlight.
Filming moody new BBC crime thriller The Jetty, which comes to a climax tomorrow, she marvelled at the self-confidence of young female co-stars.
Jenna said: “I see the young girls in The Jetty — they come in and they’re so relaxed, they’re really present, they know their own voice.
“I was an anxious wreck at their age, thinking everyone’s opinions were obviously so much better than mine.
“I would have found it a lot harder to bring my voice to set in my twenties.
“It’s wrestling with being comfortable, advocating for yourself without conflict.
“That’s taken my generation a long time to get to.”
The Jetty is the BBC’s big summer release and Jenna stars as rookie detective Ember Manning, who finds her past and present colliding after an arson attack destroys the local boat house.
Ember is a young widow trying to reopen a cold case relating to a missing young girl.
But she becomes distracted by a teenager who is pregnant by a man in his twenties — as she was years before — which makes her re-evaluate the relationship with her late husband.
The drama delves into issues of sexual morality, grooming and consent.
While the BBC series is set in Lancashire, where Blackpool-born Jenna grew up, it was filmed at the end of last year across West Yorkshire.
It meant the actress, who is also one of the executive producers, split her time between the North and London, where she lives with partner Jamie Childs, a 35-year-old writer and director.
HOUSEHOLD NAME
The couple are expecting their first baby.
At 19, Jenna was contemplating an English degree and drama school when she went for a TV audition and won the part of Jasmine Thomas in Emmerdale, who she played from 2005 to 2009.
At that time, the soap had nearly nine million viewers and she found it “totally bizarre” to suddenly become a household name.
It is the lack of formal training, she says, that left her struggling with self-doubt during her early career.
Jenna told the Radio Times: “It took me a long time to find confidence on set. If you’re in a rehearsal room, you have time to explore your toolbox, how you work and operate.
“Finding that time to mess up and fail is where you can really understand yourself as an actor, whereas I’ve learnt on the job the whole time.
“It’s why I like going back to rehearsal and doing plays.
“If you want to study your craft, how amazing to be in a place for three years to do that. I’d have loved that.”
Reflecting on the role now, Jenna says it was good experience.
She said: “On Emmerdale, if the boom wasn’t in shot you were done.
“I had to learn to nail a scene really quickly, which is probably a great exercise.”
She says her parents were always supportive of what she did, and added: “I was the kind of kid who studied for my exams without being told, so they were able to be supportive but hands-off.”
At 11, she went to an open audition and got a part in the musical Summer Holiday, with Darren Day, at the Blackpool Opera House.
Jenna said she looked up to Shameless actress Maxine Peake and joined a youth theatre group.
She signed with a casting agency and got two opportunities for work — an audition for soft drink Irn Bru and a workshop that would eventually lead to the role of troublemaker Jasmine in Emmerdale.
After leaving the ITV soap in 2009 she had six months without work, failed in her attempt to join the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and then moved to Las Vegas to find acting jobs.
Jenna attended auditions where she showed off her American accents and compelling facial expressions.
Her plan paid off and she started to get two or three auditions a day, leading to her big break back in Britain as Clara Oswald in Doctor Who in 2012.
The leading role playing Queen in BBC’s Victoria in 2016 led to Jenna twice winning the National Television Award for Best Drama Performance.
She delved into the dark world of serial killer Charles Sobhraj in The Serpent, appeared in The Cry and in 2020 met partner Jamie on the set of Netflix’s The Sandman.
Jenna has played a pregnant woman on several occasions.
After giving birth seven times in Victoria, she said: “I’ve done so many labour scenes I’ve got no noises left. I don’t know what to do any more.
“They’ve got to stop having me in labour. I haven’t even had children yet, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
BBC’s psychological mystery The Cry also focused on motherhood and at the time Jenna worried about taking on the role because she was not yet a mother herself.
After it aired, she said: “I spent a good first chunk of it just thinking they’d completely miscast.
“Why on earth me? I’m not a mother. I really hit myself over the head with it. I felt there was obviously something I wouldn’t be able to capture.
“It was something so . . . well, primal that I haven’t literally experienced. And I have really struggled with that.”
Jenna messaged all her friends who had children — many of whom she has known since her school days — for insight on the “day-to-day realities of what it is being a new mum”.
‘SIMPLE PLEASURES’
But soon she will know the ups and downs of parenting for herself.
It is sure to be a role she will adore, because Jenna loves spending time with Jackdaw director Jamie in their house in Islington, North London, surrounded by home comforts.
She said: “I get a lot of joy eating food out of a bowl. It’s like a really weird thing, I’ve got loads of those ramen bowls at home. Endless joy. Food in a bowl.
“And mugs, I like really good mugs to drink my coffee out of in the morning. Simple, simple pleasures.
“I get really upset if they’re all in the dishwasher.”
As she prepares for motherhood in real life, viewers will see her in The Jetty alongside actors from Bridgerton, House Of The Dragon, Happy Valley and The Crown.
But it was a role she did not think of as a natural choice at first, having turned down other detective parts because they were the “vehicle for the story, as opposed to a real character”.
Thankfully she saw the part of Ember differently.
But Jenna admitted she did struggle when it came to making on-screen arrests.
She told the Financial Times: “I am terrible at it. It’s one of those scenes where I instantly feel like a five-year-old and become really aware of my body, because you’ve seen it so much on TV.
It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re doing that thing’. So then you try not to do the scene like you’ve seen it.
“On this show, I remember thinking, ‘Whatever you do, don’t put your hands in your pockets,’ because that is the classic detective stance.
“But then I thought, ‘Why am I adopting these strange positions to avoid falling into the trap of the formulaic TV detective?’.
“As an actor, you have to know the genre you’re in and embrace it.”
Despite her 20-year career, Jenna still refuses to be complacent and acknowledges the industry’s uncertainties.
She said: “It’s a constant game of snakes and ladders.
“There are people who have won Oscars still vying to get jobs, so I don’t expect that to ever change.”
