‘Doctor Who’ Regenerates: How Ncuti Gatwa’s Historic Casting, Russell T Davies’ Return and a Disney+ Deal Revolutionized the Franchise

When Ncuti Gatwa makes his first appearance as the 15th Doctor in the science-fiction series “Doctor Who,” he isn’t wearing any pants.

In a 60th-anniversary special released in December, the previous Doctor — played by series icon David Tennant — subverts the show’s long-standing practice of regeneration: Instead of simply transforming into the next Doctor, he literally splits in half, bringing Gatwa’s Doctor into the world alongside him. In the process, the two divide the clothes of Tennant’s Doctor between them, leaving Gatwa in nothing but a dress shirt and a pair of tighty-whities.

“Oh, my God, that first costume fitting!” Gatwa says, bursting into an infectious fit of laughter. It’s a frequent occurrence as he speaks with Variety on a chilly March day over lemon ginger tea at the Langham hotel in London. “I was like, ‘Are you joking?!’ They showed me a pair of [underwear] and they were like” — he claps his hands as if to say “Voilà!”

In addition to the whole no-pants thing, Gatwa was just a little bit star-struck: Tennant, who played the part from 2005 to 2010, was the Doctor he’d grown up with, inspiring him to become an actor in the first place.

“To play this role beside him, who played this role which made me want to do this role, and him also being there — it was so many layers of full circle,” Gatwa says. “And on top of it, you’re wearing no pants! There was so much going on that day.”

It was an apt entrance for Gatwa, whose bubbly, fearless personality shone through in his breakout performance as the effervescent Eric on Netflix’s “Sex Education” and as “artist Ken” in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” It also marks a new era for the beloved “Doctor Who,” with series stalwart Russell T Davies returning as showrunner, writer and executive producer.

Since premiering in 1963, the seminal show has become part of the fabric of British culture, reaching across generations and prompting many a dinner-table argument about which Doctor is the best. The original series went off the air in 1989 after seven actors played the role, with an eighth appearing in a 1996 TV movie that failed to reignite excitement in the franchise. Then Davies ushered “Doctor Who” into the modern age in 2005, extending its episode lengths, giving it a sleek new look and crafting story arcs that extended throughout each season. Taking the reins was a dream for Davies, who says the show is “not only my first memory of television, but my first memory of life.”

With Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, followed by Tennant as the 10th, Davies took the series out of its cult-y niche as a British curiosity. With his relaunch, “Doctor Who” transformed into an international hit (with multiple spinoffs), as well as a star-making machine. In addition to Eccleston and Tennant, who have become two of the U.K.’s greatest acting exports, “Doctor Who” has helped launch the careers of Billie Piper, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and even Carey Mulligan, who had a small role in the now-classic 2007 episode “Blink.” After Davies’ departure in 2010 — Tennant was also leaving and Davies says he “had muscles to flex” in the adult drama space — the show continued to build on his foundation, with the most recent lead (prior to Tennant’s anniversary-special return) being Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to play the Doctor.

Now, with Davies back at the helm, Gatwa is making history as the first openly queer Black actor to take on the role of the core Doctor.

“Do you know what? It makes perfect sense to me,” Gatwa, who was born in Rwanda and raised in Scotland, says of his casting. “I feel like anyone that has a problem with someone who’s not a straight white man playing this character, you’re not really, truly a fan of the show. You’ve not been watching! Because the show is about regeneration, and the Doctor is an alien — why would they only choose to be this sort of person?”

Davies echoes that logic: “They weren’t exactly the straightest men in the past.” A trailblazer of LGBTQ television, Davies created the original “Queer as Folk” in 1999 and 2021’s “It’s a Sin.” And about how Gatwa’s Doctor is different, he says: “You’re talking about someone who does have a lightness and a joy about him that, to me, chimes with queer energy. It’s very rarely driving the story vehemently, but you will see moments exploring it. We’re not delivering a neutered Doctor.”

While the Doctor’s sexuality has never been labeled, in Gatwa’s first episode as the lead — “The Church on Ruby Road,” which premiered as the traditional “Doctor Who” Christmas special — viewers see him dancing in a kilt and referencing his “long, hot summer with Harry Houdini.” And though Davies insists he didn’t set out to be revolutionary in casting the next Doctor — “We auditioned men, women, Black, white, nonbinary actors and actors whose sexuality was their own private matter” — he says these are “exactly the type of barriers I like to break.”

“It’s very hard for anyone to stop me doing these things,” he continues. “You’d have to be a pretty brave executive to say, ‘Don’t go there’ to me. I’m sure there are people thinking that, but I wouldn’t work with them, would I?”

Davies, a self-professed “Doctor Who” super fan, says he never stopped watching the show after he handed it over to Steven Moffat. He even initiated “tweet-alongs” to fan-favorite episodes during the COVID lockdown, enlisting Tennant and Catherine Tate, who had played one of the Doctor’s “companions” — someone always keeps the Doctor company in the Tardis, the show’s time-traveling machine — during Tennant’s tenure. When the two said they’d be open to returning to the show, which
coincided with 13th Doctor Whittaker leaving, Davies pitched a 60th-anniversary special featuring Tennant and Tate to the BBC.

The broadcaster not only said yes, but asked Davies whether he’d want to reinvent the show once again, this time with a worldwide streaming partner. The BBC had found one in Disney+, where the new season will release worldwide on May 10 at 7 p.m. ET — excluding the U.K., where it will launch May 11 at midnight GMT on BBC iPlayer and air that night on BBC One. (A choice that’s maddened some British Whovians, who — if they don’t want to stay up past their bedtimes — will have to wait until the next morning to stream new episodes as they dodge spoilers.)

The new iteration was given a two-season order, and Davies says it feels like such a fresh start that he has “the urge to call it Season 1,” despite the series’ 60-plus-year history. “It’s a new show,” he says.

Davies had admired franchises like “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” making the leap to streaming, and jumped at the chance to bring “Doctor Who” to a global audience — and with that transition, to give the show a higher production value. Integral to that was Bad Wolf, the production company founded by industry veterans Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter, with whom he had worked on his first iteration of “Doctor Who.” In 2017, Bad Wolf opened Wolf Studios Wales in Cardiff, which boasts 140,000 square feet of space across seven soundstages.

“I want every person in the world to watch ‘Doctor Who,’” Gardner says of the power of Disney+. “We can just get bigger and get better reach, and it feels like exactly where ‘Doctor Who’ should be.”

And of course, with the Disney+ partnership came an elevated budget. Neither Davies nor the streamer will reveal exactly how much it is, though Davies has denied previous £10-million-per-episode rumors.

“It’s not going to be a ‘Star Wars’ budget, and do you know what? Neither should it be,” he says. “Because I do think, with no offense to anyone, if money disappeared tomorrow, we’d [still] make the best episode of ‘Doctor Who’ ever.”

With production locked in, only one task remained: finding the perfect Doctor to usher in the show’s new chapter.

Gatwa was the last person to audition for the role back in January 2022. After the production had seen around 20 actors — and believed it had found its new lead — casting director Andy Pryor called Gatwa’s agent.

“We think we’ve got them, but, like, rogue choice, we just want to see Ncuti,” Gatwa says, reenacting the phone conversation. “Do you think he’d be up for it?”

Indeed, he would: Just the week before, Gatwa had texted his agent that he’d love to play “a character like Doctor Who or Willy Wonka.”

“I was like, this is manifestation, man,” Gatwa says, still looking astonished. To prepare, he rewatched all of Davies’ episodes. “In that week, I became a die-hard fan.”

During the audition, Davies, who read with each potential Doctor, was blown away. “I actually wanted to put down the script and say, ‘You’ve got the part,’” he says. “I literally knew then.”

Davies wasn’t alone in that opinion. “I have never seen an audition tape, and I suspect I probably never will, which had more conviction, more star quality, more talent in it than Ncuti’s,” producer Tranter says. “For me, it was the audition of a lifetime.”

And every Doctor needs a companion. No. 15’s is Ruby Sunday, played by former “Coronation Street” star Millie Gibson. In the series, the spunky Mancunian teen’s search for her birth parents helps to bolster her friendship with the orphan Doctor. Today at the Langham, Gibson is dressed, fittingly, in a ruby red Comme des Garçons cardigan and matching Mary Janes as she recalls her audition with Gatwa.

“It was surreal, because I remember watching you get announced at the BAFTAs in my bedroom, being like, ‘Oh, that’s a lovely choice,’” Gibson tells Gatwa as he lets out a belt of laughter — which then conjures another memory in Gibson. “I’ll always remember being in the waiting room for my audition and just hearing your laugh and being like, ‘Mm, there it is! There we go.’”

Gibson calls their chemistry read “magic,” though she recalls thinking, “Is he just like that with everyone because he’s really charismatic?”

No, the feeling was mutual.

“I knew where I wanted to take the character of the Doctor as soon as you walked in the room,” Gatwa says. “I was like, ‘Now the characterization is complete. This was the missing piece.’”

Gatwa’s guiding word for his Doctor became “compassion” — a choice that aligned with Davies’ vision of the character being more emotionally free than in the past. “A Doctor of old is someone who traditionally would be more closed, a little bit more aloof,” Davies says. “Then completely by chance I cast the man who couldn’t hide an emotion if he tried.”

Indeed, viewers saw Gatwa’s Doctor shed tears in the Christmas special — something Davies hopes will connect with the show’s younger audience.

“The one thing I keep seeing now is the fragility of the mental health of young people. It’s like there’s a nervousness about in the air now,” he says. “So that’s the hero I wanted for them. If that younger audience is feeling so much, I wanted the Doctor to feel it on-screen as well.”

Along with patented “Doctor Who” adventures that Whovians will love and monsters new and old, the new season will feature an homage to the Beatles and an episode Davies describes as “Welsh folk-horror.” But this latest revival hasn’t been without bumps in the road. In January, Gatwa was spotted filming an episode for the upcoming second season with new cast member Varada Sethu, seemingly playing the companion, which led to reports that Gibson would be leaving the show. Turns out — as it was officially announced earlier this month — that Gibson is sticking around, and Sethu is joining the cast as another companion in Season 2. (“This is the unfortunate thing about filming in public,” Davies laments.)

“It was a little bit of a misunderstanding,” Gibson says. “But I’m very much in Season 2.”

“Doctor’s not letting this one go,” Gatwa says, chiming in. “That’s what the show is, isn’t it? There’s always new actors coming in and doing different things.”

And although Gatwa’s groundbreaking casting was met with much praise, there were, of course, some haters. Gatwa’s message to the naysayers is simple: “Don’t watch. Turn off the TV. Go and touch grass, please, for God’s sake.”

Then there’s the criticism that “Doctor Who” is a show that appeals to children — and that a queer actor playing the Doctor will reach more kids than ever with its new home on Disney+, which is a disturbing idea to homophobes. Davies sees the show’s wider reach as an opportunity to open people’s minds.

“I think if you’re 6 years old, you don’t care — not at all,” he says. “But nonetheless, as the world darkens — and I do think the world is darkening around queer rights — there is a joy and a celebration, and there’s a community. Whether you’re 12 years old and just beginning to work out who you are, 62 years old and you’ve never been who you are, or 61 years old like I am and beginning to worry about where we are in society — there is a hero out there cutting his way through the universe, looking damn good in his suits and doing it with a laugh and a smile.”

For Gatwa, Tennant has been a “guiding therapist father figure,” advising him about “the things to read, and the things not to read.”

As for how long this new era of “Doctor Who” will last? Gatwa says he’s “not going anywhere soon,” and Davies adds that he’s “already making plans” beyond the initial two-season order. No matter where this foray into the Whoniverse goes, Davies is sure of one thing: In Gatwa, a star has been born.

“I can sit here utterly certain that in five years’ time he’ll be leading a movie franchise and security will be holding me back as I go, ‘He promised me a ticket!’” Davies says with a chuckle.