50 Actors Who Could Play the Next Doctor on Doctor Who

Most recently, Natalia Tena played Wildling Osha on HBO’s “Game of Thrones”. (Photo: HBO)

Natalia Tena

Natalia Tena is best known for her role as the quirky, shape-shifting Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter films. Her performance as the rebellious, edgy Auror was charming, and a good hint at what kind of Doctor she could be. Tena has a distinctive outsider vibe, which always helps when playing an alien. But more than that, she seems just a little bit weird. The sort of weird that really means interesting and original. Which is, let’s face it, perfect for the Doctor.

As an actress, Tena also comes with a lot of built-in street cred among the geek community. In addition to playing Tonks, she also had a fairly significant role on another series near and dear to nerds everywhere: Game of Thrones. She played Osha, a wilding woman who eventually became involved with the Stark family. Now that her time in Westeros is over, what better next move for her than to jump right into another iconic franchise?

Though she’s been performing for over a decade, Tena has never really gotten a true starring role in her own right. Her resume is quite extensive, with roles in all sorts of TV series, shorts and films. But nothing truly groundbreaking, career-wise. (Though let’s be fair, she does show up in a pretty great episode of Black Mirror.) She not only has a fierce presence, but a strong grasp of comedy and an extremely expressive face. This means Tena could easily cover the two poles of playing a Time Lord – the angry ranting and the silly comedy. The person chosen to play Thirteen will need to pull off both a believable argument with an alien enemy and embrace the goofier episodes too. And Tena seems pretty perfect for that.