"It all started because I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances we did at our little theatre, and she suggested that I went for an audition. And thereafter audition just followed audition." (Hanning, 1983)

"She is a very intelligent girl, she is of noble birth and she's very technical, unlike Tegan, her companion, who has no particular skill. Different script writers do see Nyssa in different lights and so in each story she does end up doing different things and appearing slightly differently." (Hanning, 1983)

"I think what was quite nice about Nyssa was that she started out relatively strongly. Companions all start with good intentions but after a few episodes inevitably they get back into the same old mould. It's very difficult to maintain anything you start off with, but Nyssa didn't do too badly. I actually did like Nyssa very much." (Howe and Stammers, 1996)

"Playing an alien gave me plenty of scope with the part and I was able to develop it once I became a member of the team. Because Nyssa was supposed to be intelligent and had a technical mind I had a lot of fun saying some of those unpronounceable words, and I liked it when they gave me the facility of extra-sensory perception in 'Time-Flight'. What, of course, the viewers don't see is the actors getting tongue-tied over the scientific lines, or else breaking into fits of laughter when trying to be terrified by an actor in a monster's costume who can scarcely see and keeps bumping into things!" (Hanning, 1990)

"Doctor Who is like any long-running series in that the cast tend to look to the star to set the general tone. I didn't really get to know Tom Baker, who seemed to me a very intense and elusive man. But I do remember that when he was in a good mood, rehearsals and filming could be a lot of fun." (Hanning, 1990)

"Peter Davison was very different, much more open and relaxed. In fact, we shared a similar sense of humour and got on very well together. Peter was able to transmit this air of relaxation to everyone on the set, from actors right through the production team - but he had a serious approach to the job. He was very aware of the importance of preserving the Doctor's image." (Hanning, 1990)

"I also got on very well with Janet Fielding and we developed a real rapport as the series went on." (Hanning, 1990)

"I loved all the costume changes, from my 'fairy' dress at the beginning to the more adult look that came later." (Hanning, 1990)

"Poor Janet's costumes were so impractical but I was lucky - I was in trousers for a while. John (Nathan-Turner) told me that he'd had a lot of complaining letters, all saying: 'Where have Nyssa's legs gone?' when I went from my original skirt to trousers, so that's why I went back to a shorter skirt." (Howe and Stammers, 1996)

"One of my favorite stories was 'Black Orchid', because it was so different from all the others. I especially enjoyed dancing the Charleston because I have always been keen on dancing. But it wasn't all fun, because we filmed in freezing weather and I was wearing the skimpiest outfit!" (Hanning, 1990)

"I still smile when I remember how the Production Office kept getting letters of complaint about Nyssa being too covered up. So that's why when I left the series in 'Terminus' I decided to drop my skirt as a parting gesture to all those fans who had written in. Mind you, it caused such a stir at the time, and as I'm still being asked about it when I am interviewed, I'm not sure it was a wise thing to have done!" (Hanning, 1990)

"The character of Nyssa has been my favorite Doctor Who companion, and I feel that it was a character not so much underplayed as eclipsed a bit by Tegan's character, and to a certain extent by Adric's character." (Howe and Walker, 1995)

"The idea was not to keep Sarah Sutton's part on beyond about the first story of my first season. Sarah's was meant to be the first character to go, and she was meant to go fairly early. This is the influence that I've had on Doctor Who: I managed to keep her on for as long as possible. That's the one thing I can claim. John Nathan-Turner thought that Janet Fielding was meant to be the companion. However, I did feel, and I still do, that a companion has to by sympathetic, and I thought that Sarah's character was the most sympathetic that there was in the TARDIS at that time. So I said that I didn't mind who he got rid of, as long as it wasn't Sarah. Oh dear, I'm really putting my foot in it here!" (Howe and Walker, 1995)

"I personally, having worked on the program for three years, don't think that realistically there is a bigger role for assistants. I think that the job of the assistant, if you like, is to say 'What is it, Doctor?', 'Help, Doctor!' and for the Doctor to get them out of trouble. It was tried several times in my time as Doctor Who to have more interesting assistants, it was one thing that John (Nathan-Turner) wanted to bring in more. We had Tegan who was very aggressive, very blunt, didn't get on particularly well with the Doctor. We had Turlough who was plain bad, he wanted to kill the Doctor. Dispite that I think the assistant that worked best was Nyssa, from my point of view, who was just simply the simplist assistant. She was a nice person and she was bright. There's nothing wrong with that, they don't have to be stupid. But I do think that their job in Doctor Who is to get into trouble, if you like, and for the Doctor to get them out." (Luskin, 1986)

"Traken was designed to be hi-tech medieval, mixing the scientific and the spiritual. Nyssa had an almost prophetic sense of destiny. All the time thereafter, she believed that she should have been there with her people to share whatever fate had in store with them. The thing that kept her going was that her father had sacrificed himself for her, and she was fighting the feeling that she should have suffered herself. Survivor guilt is a fairly common psychological problem." (Howe and Stammers, 1996)

"The actual name was a contraction of one of two twins called Nerissa and Fanny whom I knew, but the character came out of the the situation I had in the plot. I wanted someone who could relate to Adric in a way. I wanted some kind of representative of a younger feeling about this world I had created and it went through a number of changes as it developed." (Howe and Stammers, 1996)