Bridget Minamore

Sitting in her dressing room at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Pearl Mackie is using a series of props to show me how to get to her favourite bar in her native south London. ‘There’s a tapas place in Pop Brixton. You walk in here, and there’s a vintage shop, and then there’s a stagey bit…’ She moves my dictaphone and her coffee cup around the table to demonstrate the route to the bar, which turns out to be Donostia Social Club. ‘It’s really little, but it does amazing food!’ The 30-year-old is on her first day of technical rehearsals for a new West End production of Harold Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party’ and is clearly delighted to be back on stage. She’s appearing alongside Toby Jones, Zoë Wanamaker and Stephen Mangan in the alienating and disturbing comic drama about two B&B owners holding a party for their lodger. Mackie plays Lulu, a friend of one of the owners who finds herself in trouble. This dark play might seem a leftfield choice for Mackie, who became a familiar teatime face as Doctor Who’s first lesbian companion, Bill Potts. She gained such mainstream fame she was even made into an action figure. (‘That was good – she was on top of my Christmas tree!’) But Mackie’s acting roots are in the theatre, having cut her teeth in the likes of ‘Obama-ology’ at the Finborough Theatre and the National Theatre’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’. Now she’s back in the West End and she couldn’t be happier. You were last on stage in 2016. Are you excited to return