Freema Agyeman

Freema Agyeman
Biographical Information
Full name	Frema Agyeman
Gender	Female
Birthdate	March 20, 1979
Birthplace	London, England
Appearances
Portrays	Dr. Helen Sharpe
Status	Starring

Freema Agyeman is a main actress on New Amsterdam, who portrays the role of Dr. Helen Sharpe.

Biography

Early Life

Agyeman was born in London. Her mother, Azar, is Iranian, and her father, Osei, is Ghanaian. They divorced when she was a child. Agyeman has an older sister, Leila, and a younger brother, Dominic. Although her mother is Muslim and her father Methodist, Agyeman grew up to be a practising Roman Catholic. Agyeman attended Our Lady's Convent RC High School, a Catholic school in Stamford Hill and during the summer of 1996 she studied at the Anna Scher Theatre School in Islington and studied performing arts and drama at Middlesex University, graduating in 2000.

Career

Agyeman auditioned for three roles in the 2006 series of Doctor Who. On 24 June 2005, she auditioned for the part of Sally Jacobs in "The Christmas Invasion", but the role went to Anita Briem, who better fitted the production team's concept of the character as an "ice cool blonde". Agyeman later auditioned for the roles of Esme and Adeola Oshodi, in the "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" and "Army of Ghosts", respectively. Esme was ultimately cut from the final script, but Agyeman was successful in her audition for Adeola. She filmed her role in the series in December 2005 and appeared on screen as Adeola on 1 July 2006. The production team were impressed by the versatility shown by Agyeman across her three auditions and called her back as a serious candidate for the new companion. She attended another audition (ostensibly for an episode of Torchwood) before a final screen-test with Tenth Doctor actor, David Tennant. Tennant left a reassuring note under the door of Agyeman's hotel room, and this helped calm any nerves the actress had. Following extensive speculation on who would replace Billie Piper, Agyeman was confirmed to the press as new companion Martha Jones on 5 July 2006.

Agyeman studied dance and practiced horseback riding, martial arts and gymnastics, a fact that the producers exploited in order to provide her with more physically arduous action scenes. Agyeman appeared several times on The Bedtime Hour on CBeebies reading the story broadcast shortly before 7.00pm. She narrated the first series of BBC Three's hospital documentary series Bizarre ER which ran from 14 February 2008 to 3 April 2008 and also provided the narration for a second series which began airing on Tuesday 21 April 2009. Agyeman hosted a Doctor Who-themed portion of the BBC Proms on 27 July. A one-hour cut-down version of the prom made its TV début on BBC1, New Year's Day, 2009. Agyeman played foundling girl Tattycoram in the Emmy Award winning 2008 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, which began on 26 October 2008, starring alongside her fellow Torchwood stars Eve Myles and Ruth Jones. Some of Agyeman's scenes for the first episode were shot in the grounds of Deal Castle, Kent, which doubled for Marseille, France. Agyeman was delighted to have appeared in Little Dorrit, as it had always been a dream of hers to appear in a period drama. In 2008 Agyeman also appeared in Survivors, a BBC 1 remake of the cult 1970s TV series, as Jenny Walsh (surname originally reported to be Collins), although her character was killed off in the first episode in a shock twist despite featuring prominently in promotional materials for the series.

Between 2009 and 2012, Agyeman starred as Crown Prosecutor Alesha Phillips in Law & Order: UK, a UK adaptation and spin-off from the US Law & Order franchise. Agyeman is a self-professed "massive fan" of the original Law & Order series, especially Seasons 3 and 4. In preparation for the role, Agyeman sat in on live trials, toured the Old Bailey, and conferred with her law-degree holding sister, Leila: "She's great and really patient at explaining things to laymen, because I was coming at it completely blind. She's been a good source." She remained with the programme for its first six series departing the cast before the seventh series due to other filming commitments. In March 2012, it was announced that Agyeman would play Larissa, "an easy-going party girl who works at Interview magazine" in the pilot of Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries. In early 2013, she starred in the Cbeebies television series Old Jack's Boat as Shelley. Agyeman appears in the Netflix series Sense8, released in June 2015, created by J. Michael Straczynski and Lilly and Lana Wachowski. She is a series regular and plays Amanita, the girlfriend of Nomi, a sensate. In 2018, it was announced that Freema was cast in New Amsterdam in a main role.

External Links

• Freema Agyeman on Wikipedia
• Freema Agyeman on IMDB
• @FreemaOfficial on Twitter
• @freemaofficial on Instagram