Daily Inspiration Quote by Lalla Ward

Ward’s line lands like backstage candor that accidentally reveals how acting pleasure maps onto power. She’s not judging characters on morality; she’s ranking them on playability. “Romana” is “much more fun to do” because competence, wit, and control give an actor room to breathe. Romana isn’t a function of the plot so much as a force within it, which means Ward gets to drive scenes instead of simply reacting to them. The phrasing “fun to do” is tellingly physical: performance as a craft you can feel in your body, not an abstract role you “portray.”

Then she pivots to the “Princess when she was turning bad,” and the temperature changes. “Did enjoy” is softer, almost polite, but the hook is in “turning.” Villainy mid-transformation is catnip for an actor because it’s neither fixed nor fully explained. It’s a character in motion, still negotiating the lie she tells herself. That’s where subtext lives: the flicker between charm and threat, self-justification and appetite. A fully “bad” character can become a mask; a character turning bad is a process, and the audience leans in to catch the moment the hinge squeaks.

Context matters here: Ward is speaking as a Doctor Who performer reflecting on two archetypes sci-fi loves to flatten into types - the capable companion and the corrupted royal. Her comment quietly defends the genre’s best trick: using camp surfaces to smuggle in psychological gradations. She’s admitting that the real thrill isn’t goodness or evil; it’s agency.