You’d think an all-knowing Time Lord would be pretty in the loop when it comes to all things Doctor Who. But as it turns out, due to the intense secrecy behind the BBC series, not even Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi knew the big news about who his successor would be. Via io9, Capaldi talked about finding out that the Thirteenth Doctor would be Jodie Whittaker, the first ever female actor to take on the character.

Capaldi stumbled upon the reveal while appearing at his New York Comic Con spotlight panel. Apparently, a visit to his tailor at Paul Smiths in London was enough to spill the closely guarded secret. “Everybody knows me in there,” he said. “And they said, ‘We just got a call…from the Doctor Who office saying, ‘Can we have a pair of [Peter’s] trousers, but with a waist size thirty?’”

After hearing that, Capaldi said he knew it: “That can’t really be a man with a thirty-inch waist. That must be a lady then!”

Capaldi went on to say that Whittaker moved to Cardiff in a place that was very close to his, but she was initially forced to avoid him because it would have meant revealing that she was his successor. Capaldi was officially informed about the news a few days before it was announced, and he learned about Whittaker’s new place when he called her.

Assuming that Doctor Who is still going strong five years from now, which is a very safe assumption, we may actually see Capaldi and Whittaker onscreen together as the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors for the Doctor Who 60th anniversary special. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait that long to see Whittaker in action, as the 11th season of Doctor Who will arrive on BBC and BBC America in 2018.

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Images: BBC