Nicola Bryant: The Companion Who Wasn’t Supposed to be British
Nicola Jane Bryant was born on October 11, 1960, in Surrey. Not London, not New York, not Hollywood—just a quiet village near Guildford, the kind of place where you imagine garden fences, tea kettles, and people peeking through curtains to see if the neighbor’s having an affair. She was the first daughter, which means she was doomed to responsibility from the start. Dance lessons at three, piano keys under her little fingers—because what else do you do with a girl in the provinces? At ten she wanted ballet, but asthma said
screw you, kid. So instead of leaping gracefully across stages, she sat down hard with an amateur dramatic group. That’s the way it usually goes. One door shuts, another opens, and the draft carries in cigarette smoke and broken dreams.
She clawed her way into the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art with a scholarship, because in those days you needed talent and a free pass. In her last year she did “No, No, Nanette.” Not exactly Shakespeare, but enough to get her face out there.
And then came the break. Or maybe the trap. Depends how you look at it.
Doctor Who. 1984.
Bryant gets cast as Peri Brown, the American companion to Peter Davison’s soft-eyed Fifth Doctor and Colin Baker’s technicolor Sixth. She wasn’t American, of course, but this is television. They wanted cleavage, accents, and a little “sex appeal” to keep the old beast alive. So Nicola Bryant faked it—literally. She kept up an American accent everywhere, even interviews, even rehearsals, even over pints at the pub. That’s dedication, or madness, or both. Colin Baker was the only one who figured it out, the poor bastard.
Producer John Nathan-Turner admitted flat-out that Bryant was brought in to juice up the ratings with low-cut outfits. So while the Doctor fussed over paradoxes and timey-wimey nonsense, Bryant was shoved in the middle of the screen like a girl in a pin-up calendar, made to look good while aliens slobbered. You can almost hear the BBC execs snickering in their suits, asking if the neckline could plunge
just a bit lower.
She played Peri from ’84 to ’86. Two years in the TARDIS, plenty of monsters, plenty of running down corridors, and one radio production during the show’s hiatus called
Slipback. And when the contract was up, Nathan-Turner didn’t renew. Not because she wasn’t good. Not because fans didn’t love her. Just because companions weren’t supposed to outlast the Doctor. Rules are rules, even if they’re stupid.
But she wasn’t done.
After Who
The stage called. She landed in the West End in Killing Jessica, trading sci-fi nonsense for live-theatre sweat. Patrick Macnee was there, Bryan Forbes directed, and she did nine long months at the Savoy. Then came TV bits—
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol in ’88, where she brushed up against Rowan Atkinson and company. The ’90s gave her cheap sci-fi knockoffs like The Stranger series—basically Doctor Who in a trench coat with the serial numbers filed off. She even got roped into
Bryant wasn’t precious about Peri, though. She kept coming back for Big Finish audio dramas, reprising the role with Baker and Davison. She even directed a few things—
UNIT: The Wasting and Judge Dredd: 99 Code Red! Because in showbiz, if they won’t cast you, sometimes you grab the mic yourself.
She dipped in and out of stage productions.
Taboos in 2006, Tom Stoppard’s Rock ’n’ Roll in 2007, Don’t Look Now on tour in 2008 and 2009. She even did a location doc called In the Footsteps of The Two Doctors
And the other gigs?
Commercials, voiceovers, the kind of work that keeps the lights on. She was the voice behind BMW, Twinings Tea, Florida Orange Juice, even Nationwide. She probably sold more bloody insurance than she ever did box office tickets. That’s the way it goes. The faces fade, but the voices live forever in the background of a million living rooms.
Recent years
Bryant never really stopped. In 2017, she showed up in Star Trek Continues, closing out Captain Kirk’s five-year mission with a wink. In 2023, she was back as Peri in
Tales of the TARDIS. The old fans cheered, the new ones Googled “Who’s Nicola Bryant?” and went down a rabbit hole of VHS tapes and grainy fan convention videos.
And that’s the story.
A girl from Surrey who wanted to dance, got betrayed by her lungs, pivoted to drama, conned the BBC into thinking she was American, spent two years running from rubber monsters in skimpy outfits, then hustled her way through stage, film, radio, and voiceovers. She made a living. She made a legacy. She never got the marquee Hollywood career, but she got something maybe more permanent—she’s a slice of TV history.
And when the Doctor Who fandom gets drunk and nostalgic, they’ll always remember Peri. Not just for the plunging neckline. For the spark. For the fact she sold the nonsense like it mattered.
Nicola Bryant. A woman who proved you don’t have to be a Time Lord to survive the time machine. Sometimes you just need grit, a fake accent, and the ability to keep going when the scripts are lousy and the monsters are made of foam
