Jodie Whittaker is hyped for the World Cup. Although her family home in north London (Gooners, FYI) will be split into UK and US camps — her husband Christian Contreras is American-Hispanic — like all of us, she’s hoping England will finally be able to bring it home. After brilliant close calls in recent years, she’s been thinking about what we miss as a nation when we focus on commiserating. “Everyone, like me, only ever remembers the shit bit,” she says. “It’s such an English thing. We never bloody remember all the bits in between that were amazing. We just remember the headline: ‘Didn’t win’.”
If it feels a little out of character for Whittaker — one of the UK’s most in-demand actors, with a career that stretches from a bereaved mother in Broadchurch to Black Mirror, Toxic Town and, most famously, the 13th Doctor Who — to be talking sport, that’s because her filmography has recently taken a swift punt into the world of football.
