The 35-year-old actor said it was a dream come true for her as a performer who would now go on to play the Time Lord, reported The Independent.
"It was incredibly emotional because my entire life, as a child, all I ever wanted to be was be an actor, and I wanted to do it because I wanted to play pretend, and that is the ultimate.
"I'm about to play an alien, a Time Lord. And that as a girl? Who knew? That's incredible and really emotional because of that," Whittaker said in an interview on BBC Radio 6.