Diana Rigg and daughter pair up as Dr Who villains
IT'S a Stirling effort from Diana Rigg and daughter Rachael Stirling as the pair team up to play the villains in Doctor Who.
The mother-daughter double-act make quite an impact in a storyline which turns back the clocks to Victorian Yorkshire where they run the spooky Sweetville Mill.
Titled The Crimson Horror, this Saturday's episode sees mother and daughter - Rachael's father is Scottish landowner and theatre producer Archie Stirling, to whom Dame Diana was married in the 1980s - strike fear into a community.
As a BBC1 blurb teases: "There is something very odd about that factory, nobody who goes in seems to come back out. And there's never any smoke."
"We'd never worked together before and this was the first offer we'd had,"
Dame Diana, 74, told Radio Times. "It's such fun, really lovely. I'd never thought about being in Doctor Who. Children get hooked and that stays into adulthood."
Jenna-Louise Coleman, who plays Clara, says said she and the Doctor, Matt Smith, were delighted to have mother and daughter on board.
She says: "Oh my God, Diana was so funny on set. I think Matt described her role as an old hag, but in the best possible way."
Speaking of being offered television roles that match her age, former Avengers star Dame Diana adds: "Vanity is pointless and beauty a diminishing asset."
The Crimson Horror adventure will also see the return of Madame Vastra, played by Glasgow-born actress Neve McIntosh.