It looks like a school detention. Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson<\/a>, the new Doctor Who<\/a> and his latest fellow traveller, sitting side by side on hard chairs, behind a featureless table. For actors at the end of two days of interviews, they appear surprisingly fresh. Gatwa, in a polo shirt with a chain tucked beneath the collar, shakes his head. \u201cWe are wearing a lot of make-up.\u201d<\/p>\n They both burst out laughing. This is what happens when you let the naughty kids sit together in class. It\u2019s their comparison, not mine \u2013 established the moment they met in September 2022, at Gibson\u2019s test for the part of Ruby Sunday, the foundling heroine whose story is, in Gatwa\u2019s words, \u201cthe spine of the series\u201d.<\/p>\n The meet-cute went like this: Gibson, teenage regular in Coronation Street<\/a> with an Inside Soap Award on her mantelpiece, arriving early, killing time in a caf\u00e9, then waiting nervously behind an audition room door painted a threatening shade of red. \u201cI was bricking it,\u201d she says, \u201cand then I heard Ncuti\u2019s laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n Gatwa, Kigali-born alumnus of Sex Education<\/a>, already announced as the Fifteenth Doctor, making an instant judgement about the new arrival: \u201cWe would have been trouble at school together,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what I thought the moment she walked in. Huge smile. Cheeky twinkle in the eye. The teachers would have had a nightmare with us.\u201d<\/p>\n The audition went well, but Gibson left in a state of uncertainty. \u201cWe had such great chemistry but then I thought, maybe he\u2019s like that with everyone.\u201d She received the good news a month later, at a spray tan salon. She tried not to cry off the vegetable dye.<\/p>\n Then the work began. Learning scripts by showrunner Russell T Davies, Gibson sometimes theorising about the plot before Gatwa had read a word. Climbing the rigging of a goblin galleon. Riding a satsuma-coloured Vespa through Cardiff with Bonnie Langford. Negotiating scenes with spacefaring babies and giant slugs. Rehearsing the waltz and the tango. An intense shoot for former showrunner Steven Moffat\u2019s episode, Boom, in which the Doctor puts his foot on an alien landmine, forcing him to defeat that week\u2019s menace without budging from a sulphurous alien crater constructed in the studio.<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t seeing daylight,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cWe had black noses at the end of the day because of the amount of smoke on set.\u201d A whole season was finished and the next begun before the Christmas episode<\/a> had even been transmitted.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re knackered by the end of the day,\u201d says Gatwa. \u201cYou\u2019ll start with a comedic scene, quickly move on to my best friend has just died in front of my eyes, then afterwards a quick little wildtrack of something that you did yesterday. There isn\u2019t time to be as mischievous as we\u2019d like.\u201d<\/p>\n But there was time to build a friendship? \u201cOh my God, yes,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cI spent every single day with this guy for months. We ended up knowing everything about each other.\u201d<\/p>\n So do they know each other\u2019s birthdays? \u201cYes,\u201d they chime.<\/p>\n Have they met each other\u2019s families? \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n Do they know each other\u2019s politics? \u201cAbsolutely!\u201d says Gatwa.<\/p>\n Enough to know how the other will vote in the next general election? \u201cI\u2019m only just able to vote,\u201d says Gibson. Gatwa hoots with laughter, then drops his voice to a sincere whisper. \u201cFor you, Millie,\u201d he says, \u201cto be 18 and taking on one of the biggest roles in British TV must not have been easy. But you made it look easy. I think people often forget how young you are because of how much you can handle.\u201d<\/p>\n The history of Doctor Who might incline them to forget. The TARDIS has whisked many teenagers into space, but only one \u2013 18-year-old Matthew Waterhouse\u2019s doomed boy genius Adric \u2013 acted his age. Sophie Aldred was 24 when she won the role of Ace, the baseball-bat wielding 16-year-old who accompanied Sylvester McCoy in the late \u201980s. When the programme began in 1963, Carole Ann Ford, who played the Doctor\u2019s 15-year-old granddaughter Susan, was a married woman with a young child at home. Gibson, though, is only as old as Ruby Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so glad I was playing my own age,\u201d she says. Then she flashes a wicked look across the table. \u201cDid you know Ncuti couldn\u2019t have a moustache because he was playing a 16-year-old in Sex Education?\u201d<\/p>\n When Gatwa started on Doctor Who, his commitment to the Netflix<\/a> series had yet to expire. For a short time he shuttled between both sets. \u201cInitially, there was a conversation about keeping me clean shaven for Doctor Who,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019d spent the last four years playing a child, at the age of 30, so I said, \u2018Let me have my moustache back.’\u201d The body cannot grant wishes so briskly, but the make-up department can. \u201cBella [Arghiros], my make-up artist, would present me with a little bag of pubes every morning,\u201d he explains. He doesn\u2019t mean this literally, but he and Gibson are now laughing so much they can barely get the words out. \u201cI went through the process of sticking them on for two months,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cTrimming them,\u201d whoops Gibson. \u201cBetween every take,\u201d adds Gatwa. \u201cAs they flap off in the wind. I\u2019m chasing a monster and the director says, \u2018We\u2019ll have to go again because his moustache is half off.\u2019 So when it grew back, I felt very liberated.\u201d<\/p>\n Being in a room with this pair is a giddy, chaotic experience. During our conversation, Gatwa tries to guess my star sign. He gets all the way through the zodiac before he gets it right. (We\u2019ve established he\u2019s not psychic.) At another he jumps to his feet and announces that he is bursting for a wee. \u201cI\u2019m younger than you so I can hold it,\u201d says Gibson. Bladder control, she says, is crucial to filming Doctor Who. \u201cEspecially when you\u2019re in a harness for a good hour.\u201d<\/p>\n They show no trace of grandeur. Before our interview, Gatwa had ordered a sly snack between chats \u2013 a chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle. Gibson likes telling stories against herself: she booked a January holiday to get away from the UK after the broadcast of the Christmas special. She mimes dodging the paparazzi. \u201cBut it\u2019s actually been all right. I think it\u2019s because so many people come up to you in this job and tell you your life is going to change. And I think, when?\u201d<\/p>\n They don\u2019t tell each other everything, however. When Ryan Gosling took to the stage at the Oscars this year to perform Barbie<\/a>\u2019s showstopper I\u2019m Just Ken, Gibson had no idea that her co-star would be high-kicking in the chorus line in a pink bow tie. \u201cI was sat at home with a loved one of mine and he was the one who pointed it out and said, \u2018Mills, was that Ncuti on telly?’\u201d<\/p>\n Has Ncuti ever sung that earworm of a song at work? \u201cEvery day,\u201d sighs Gibson, witheringly. \u201cEvery day.\u201d Gatwa ignores the mockery. He\u2019s proud, he says, to be a Ken.<\/p>\n Did we know, he asks, that there was a Doctor Who story called The Happiness Patrol (in 1988), in which the TARDIS was painted a shade of Barbie pink? (Oh yes: it\u2019s set in a confectionery-based dystopia where insufficiently cheerful citizens are drowned in strawberry syrup by a state executioner with a strong resemblance to Bertie Bassett.) \u201cRussell says to me, \u2018How do you know these things from the classic series?\u2019 and I say\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I\u2019m the Doctor and I was there!\u201d interrupts Gibson. \u201cBecause I watched them on my research days,\u201d he counters. The ruffled dandyism of Jon Pertwee\u2019s Doctor has given him the biggest kick. \u201cI do love a bit of Pertwee,\u201d he enthuses. \u201cHe\u2019s always got his cha-chas out.\u201d<\/p>\n The series has given its new stars a chance to do the same. The Devil\u2019s Chord, featuring the Beatles and a musical supervillain played by drag star Jinkx Monsoon, puts Gatwa in an Afro and blue pinstripe and Gibson in a miniskirt and towering beehive. \u201cWe felt the hottest we\u2019ve ever felt in our entire lives,\u201d says Gibson.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were so hot,\u201d they say, simultaneously.<\/p>\n \u201cI miss looking like that,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cSo much,\u201d says Gatwa.<\/p> And here the past tense creeps in. For a long while, rumours have swirled that Gibson\u2019s Ruby Sunday is on her way out already, giving way to a new companion played by Andor actor Varada Sethu<\/a> for the next season (currently filming to air next year). Now, the BBC have announced Gibson and Sethu will both appear in the 2025 season alongside Gatwa. Either way, Gibson says she hasn\u2019t filmed Ruby\u2019s final scene yet \u2013 her day is not yet over.<\/p>\n \u201cI know how it ends next season,\u201d she says. \u201cBut after that I can only guess. I might be here with a walking stick in a few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n 60 years of Doctor Who have produced TARDIS crews of varying degrees of intimacy. In the late 1980s, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred<\/a> went clubbing after filming. Frazer Hines, who spent three years in the \u201960s gadding about in a kilt beside Patrick Troughton\u2019s Doctor, also accompanied him as he delivered housekeeping money to his dependents. (Troughton maintained two families whose existence was unknown to each other.)<\/p>\n Tom Baker\u2019s tempestuous romance with Lalla Ward, who played Time Lady Romana, divided rehearsal rooms into opposing camps in the early \u201980s and is sometimes legible on screen: whole episodes go by without them making eye contact. These new successors, however, can finish each other\u2019s sentences. Sometimes they even speak in unison.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get in sync,\u201d says Gatwa.<\/p>\n \u201cWe Bluetooth emotions,\u201d says Gibson, in pure Gen Z. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of eye contact,\u201d says Gatwa. And a bit more, right now, behind the desk.<\/p>\n![\"Ruby](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2024\/04\/WHO-JPP-150523-09367r-32a35ac.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Doctor")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>![\"The](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2024\/04\/DWNS08.0500537v2-229eda8.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Doctor")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>![\"Ncuti](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2024\/04\/ryan-gosling-Ncuti-oscars-GettyImages-2074839762-ab8368b-e1714381227818.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"96th")
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