The news is out. Or is it? In the last day or so, reports have been leaking that Ncuti Gatwa – the charismatic, ever-cheerful face of Doctor Who – is in fact set to quit the show, months before the second season airs.
Or perhaps he’s only thinking about it. Reports vary: the Independent has said he is “on the verge of quitting”, while The Sun has quoted a source as saying that “Ncuti doesn’t want to be tied to the series beyond this and plans to relocate to Los Angeles with several Hollywood projects standing by for him”.
The BBC, for its part, has testily affirmed that all is well. But resignation letter or not, one thing is clear – the show is in trouble.
This is not to say anything bad about Gatwa’s involvement – far from it. When the 32-year-old assumed the role it came with a lot of buzz, with former showrunner Russell T Davies also returning to the helm. He was a young, agile replacement for Jodie Whittaker’s take on the character, with charisma to burn, and was effectively taking the mantle from David Tennant’s Doctor, who appeared for a three-part special to hand the role over.
But Gatwa’s potential departure two years later (making him the shortest-lived modern Doctor to set foot in the Tardis, barring inaugural Who, Christopher Eccleston) comes on the back of a whole heap of bad headlines for the show.
Viewership is down — by approximately half. There are rumours that the BBC’s deal with Disney+ (which reportedly tripled the show’s budget, by around £100m) is in trouble, and even that Doctor Who itself is in danger of being scrapped (though these reports have been labelled as “incorrect” by the BBC.) “Doctor Who has not been shelved. As we have previously stated, the decision on season 3 will be made after season 2 airs,” a spokesperson told various news outlets. “The deal with Disney+ was for 26 episodes – and exactly half of those still have to transmit.”
It’s not new chaos. Last year, the show made headlines for allegedly scrapping Millie Gibson’s companion Ruby Sunday. It was claimed she was being written out of the show in favour of a new companion played by Varada Sethu, and though things were eventually cleared up by showrunner Davies (who stated she was appearing in the second season after all), the confusion over the issue lingers.
And things aren’t looking good in Gatwa’s camp either. As the Sun’s source has said: “His team also see a lot of fan backlash from the series, and don’t want the perception of him still being The Doctor to get in the way of any future work.”
"The show has been poorly managed in recent years and there's a lot of people who've been working on this show for years and now being cast aside due to poor leadership. People warned some episodes were getting too caught up on an agenda rather than telling a story and those people got shouted down, ignored."
It’s true that Gatwa’s appointment has inevitably sparked some horrendous racist and homophobic trolling, which can’t have made things easy for him. Plus, he doesn’t exactly need the fame that the role brings; the opposite. His position as a buzzy, in demand actor gave the show a sprinkling of stardust it was sorely lacking. But actors Matt Smith and David Tennant vaulted to fame on the back of Russell T Davies’ pen: neither were household names before they joined the show, and both of them left to pursue glowing careers in film and TV.
Gatwa joined Doctor Who off the back of Sex Education, the wildly successful series that netted him multiple award nominations for his role as Eric Effiong and arguably claimed an equal viewership to Who thanks to its position as one of Netflix’s flagship shows. His star was already on the rise – even before he joined the Who, he made a cameo in the blockbuster megahit Barbie, and Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air.
Maybe Doctor Who will help him vault to Hollywood fame a fraction faster than he would otherwise have done, but his star was already on the rise.
It’s rare that an actor outgrows the role they sign up for even before they make their debut, but this seems to be the case for Gatwa. Onto bigger and better things – though the same might not be said for the show he leaves behind.
