The BBC have today issued a press release revealing that Maisie Williams ("Game of Thrones") will be guest starring in Series 9. The release also gives us two new episode titles - "The Girl Who Died" by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat and "The Woman Who Lived" by Catherine Tregenna. Both are period dramas. Other guest stars include Rufus Hound:
Having landed back in the UK fresh from touring the US, today Maisie Williams sets foot on the Doctor Who TARDIS to take up a guest role in the hit BBC One show that returns to our screens this autumn.
Maisie has already found global fame and is renowned for her role as Arya Stark in the international fantasy drama series Game of Thrones. She also starred in the one-off docu-drama Cyberbully and was cast as one of the leads of Carol Morley’s drama The Falling. As well as being a three-time Screen Actors Guild Awards nominee, in February of this year she was awarded with a Shooting Star Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
On her first day on set, Maisie Williams said: “I'm so excited to be working on Doctor Who as it’s such a big and important part of British Culture. I can’t wait to meet the cast and crew and start filming, especially as we’ll be shooting not too far from my home town.”
Steven Moffat, lead writer and Executive Producer, added: “We’re thrilled to have Maisie Williams joining us on Doctor Who. It’s not possible to say too much about who or what she’s playing, but she is going to challenge the Doctor in very unexpected ways. This time he might just be out of his depth, and we know Maisie is going to give him exactly the right sort of hell.”
Bursting with drama, wit and heart, the show continues filming with two period adventures - The Girl Who Died written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat, and The Woman Who Lived by Catherine Tregenna. Starring Peter Capaldi (The Doctor) and Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald), the duo continue to time travel through epic adventures directed by Ed Bazalgette (BBC One’s 18th-century drama Poldark).
Comedian and actor Rufus Hound, who recently appeared in the series Cucumber, also joins the guest cast alongside BBC Three’s Siblings and CBBC’s Horrible Histories star Tom Stourton, Ariyon Bakare, Simon Lipkin, Ian Conningham, Murray McArthur, Barnaby Kay, John Voce, and Struan Rodger.
Doctor Who has had a decade of success since its re-launch and is one of BBC One’s most highly regarded dramas. The much-loved brand is already a phenomenon delivering on a global scale, with the last series’ (series 8) consolidated average at 7.4 million.
The BBC Cymru Wales-produced drama will return to BBC One this autumn with further casting to be announced in due course.