Saira Choudhry had maths lessons to prepare for her role as a Maths teacher in Waterloo Road

Saira Choudhry had maths tuition for her role in 'Waterloo Road'.

The 42-year-old actress has joined the cast of the school-based BBC One drama as teacher Nisha Chandra and enlisted the help of a friend to understand her scripts because she "scraped" a pass in her GCSE Maths and couldn't get her head round some of her lines that were based around numbers.

She is quoted by the Daily Star newspaper as saying: "I scraped a C in maths. I'm not the best at maths at all. I have a friend, Sam, and he is a part-time maths tutor.

"So when I first joined 'Waterloo Road' and I had these massive monologues, I would be like, 'Sam, help me, what does this mean?'

"He would send me maths videos and draw all these trian- gles. He's been really useful."

The former 'Coronation Street' star also used YouTube videos to make sure she was pronouncing complicated terminology correctly and is thrilled with her latest role because she has been a fan for such a long time .

She said: ""I also get on YouTube as well and check that I'm pronouncing it right, because you can always trust the children to tell you you're pronouncing it wrong. It feels amazing to be part of the 'Waterloo Road' family.

"I've been a fan of the show for so long. "It's because it's set in Manchester, so I've always related to the show with the characters. Knowing it is set not far from my house, it feels really good to finally be a part of it."

Jason Manford will play new headmaster Steve Savage in the upcoming 14th series of the acclaimed drama when it returns on Tuesday 10 September, whilst established cast members include Adam Thomas (Donte Charles); Kym Marsh (Nicky Walters); James Baxter (Joe Casey); Jo Coffey (Wendy Whitwell); Shauna Shim (Valerie Chambers); Neil Fitzmaurice (Neil Guthrie); Rachel Leskovac (Coral Walker), and Katherine Pearce (Amy Spratt) will also be back.