Louise Jameson rubbishes her Doctor Who exit

Louise Jameson has rubbished her ‘Doctor Who’ exit.

The 72-year-old actress played Leela, the Fourth Time Lord’s (Tom Baker) accomplice from 1977 to 1978, who decided to leave the Doctor and stay on the planet Gallifrey with her newfound love.

And now, Louise has bashed the writers for not giving her character a “great big dramatic” ending.

The ‘Emmerdale’ star said: "It was a c*** ending, wasn't it? I think she should have died saving the Doctor's life – something really heroic.

“Or you travel forward, and she's got a football team of children ... something dramatic, anyway. I mean, it's so cliche, isn't it, that she's fallen in love, that's how we get rid of her.

“Literally the night before we shot my last scene, [producer Graham Williams] came up to me and said, 'It's very easy to rewrite your exit ... can I ask you one last time, will you please change your mind?' – very flattering.

“I was already signed to go and play Portia [in ‘The Merchant of Venice’] in Bristol, so there's no way I could have stayed, but I think it had been written with him thinking, 'I can change her mind', which is why it hadn't been a great big dramatic story."

Louise previously revealed she was asked to reprise the role to bridge the gap between Tom Baker and Peter Davison’s iteration of the Time Lord but turned it down after deciding she didn’t want to commit to another season of the long-running BBC show.

At a British Film Institute Event in 2020, she said: "I got a phone call from John Nathan-Turner - and I knew he was now a producer at the BBC - to say could he take me out to lunch and discuss ‘a series’ – that's all he'd say. I thought, 'Oh, I'm going to get my own series!’

"It turned out that John wanted me to do the last one or two stories of Tom and the whole of the next season, and he told me the [next] Doctor hadn't been cast yet.

"I said I would do the leaving and the arrival, but I didn't want to do a whole other season.”