The tragedy of Peri Brown and the Fifth Doctor

[C.E. Evans]

What is it about Who and making the actors/actresses use a different accent than their native one?

Peri was playing an American.

Though I'm not sure why they wanted to write her as American, it wouldn't have made any real differences to the plots if they hadn't

They just wanted to do something different, to have a companion who wasn't from the UK. Not really any different from having a companion who wasn't from Earth like Nyssa or Romana.

 

[Starkers]

Well it wasn't that different really given the last female companion had been Australian...

 

[Guy Gardener]

But in that case, they chose an Australian Actress.

How difficult would it have been to find an American who could pass for American?

6 took the piss out of Peri for mutilating the English Language, and then the tables turned as Mel calls him a fat bastard, and erects a spinning cycle in the control room, powering all the blinking LEDs on the TARDIS console.

6 got to play bully and victim in the same lifetime.

He treated the penguin like shit but, for the majority 6 had been really sweet to all his other audio companions.