STRICTLY Come Dancing champ Rose Ayling-Ellis says she got her Doctor Who role thanks to host Claudia Winkleman.
deaf actress said her guest appearance in The Well episode of the BBC sci-fi series earlier this year was a dream come true.
She told the Big Issue: “Doctor Who was on my bucket list.”;;
Rose said she saw show chief Russell T Davies at an awards ceremony and star “forced me to speak to him, so it’s thanks to Claudia I got the job”;;.
She added the part was rewritten to make her a deaf character.
The ex- star is preparing to take on the lead role in ITV detective thriller Code Of Silence, for which she is also executive producer.
She said: “My big issue at the moment is the cuts to disability benefit, that’s such an important issue for so many people.
“There’s a lot of fear around.
“Rather than making cuts, they need to support disabled people better.
“People making (benefit) assessments need to have better disability awareness.
“I remember mine years ago, they wanted a telephone call to assess my need for Disability Living Allowance.
“I’m deaf, I can’t hear you on the phone, and if I’d talked through an interpreter, they would say I can live independently and I’d have got nothing.”;;
