Who’s that girl?
As Millie Gibson returns to Doctor Who, the star tells DQ about her journey in the TARDIS, why the sci-fi series is the best training for an actor and why viewers might not recognise her in upcoming period drama The Forsyte Saga.
Even for an actor who is now used to traversing the boundaries of space and time, it’s been a busy time for Millie Gibson. Last year the star was in Cardiff completing filming for season 15 of Doctor Who – the second featuring Ncuti Gatwa as the titular Doctor – before making the short journey to Bristol to shoot The Forsyte Saga, a new adaptation of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte novels.
Now back at home in Manchester, “it’s been crazy,” she tells DQ. “I saw some episodes from season two and I’m like, ‘God, is that only just coming out?’ I look so different already. It’s wild the way TV works.”
A former Coronation Street star who left the ITV soap in September 2023, it was only a few months later that it was announced Gibson was joining Doctor Who, the BBC’s iconic sci-fi series, alongside Gatwa as the 15th incarnation of the Doctor. She made her debut as Ruby Sunday in the Christmas 2023 special, The Church on Ruby Road, before the serialised story element to season 14 of the series focused on the discovery of Ruby’s parentage.
Ruby and the Doctor then parted ways at the conclusion of that story in the S14 finale. But Ruby is set to reappear in tomorrow’s episode, Lucky Day, the fourth episode of S15. It picks up with Ruby’s life back on earth without the Doctor, but when a new threat emerges, can she and military organisation UNIT save her new boyfriend Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) from the terrifying Shreek?
“Ruby Sunday’s back,” exclaims Gibson, “which is so nice to say, and she’s in a much different headspace since travelling with the Doctor. It’s about her recovering from travelling with the Doctor, which is really cool to see because you don’t really see how the Companion is doing after that whole journey. It’s a pretty wild ride to go on and then just to pop back home and carry on with your friends.
“She’s with her two mums and her gran, and so is the beautiful Jonah Hauer-King. He’s incredible in it. He’s a lot of fun. I think viewers will really enjoy what he has to offer to Doctor Who – and that’s your lot. That’s all I can say.”
When Varada Sethu was revealed to be playing Belinda Chandra, the Doctor’s new Companion, in S15, there was much speculation that Ruby – and Gibson – would be leaving the series prematurely. But Gibson always knew the plan for her character.
“I love Ruby so much, so it wouldn’t have felt right to end her story quite there [at the end of S14], and she’s a very fiery, wanting-more character so it would only feel right to bring her back. The finale was such a beautiful moment to share, so it’s nice to carry on her story in a different way. That chapter’s complete, so now it’s her new chapter of what life’s like without the Doctor.”
When it came to joining Doctor Who, just as it was being super-charged by a new BBC/Disney+ commissioning pact and the return of Russell T Davies to the showrunner seat, “it was a no-brainer,” says Gibson.
Despite concerns from her parents about leaving Coronation Street – “My mum and dad were like, ‘Are you sure?’” – Gibson wanted to avoid getting too comfortable on the long-running series and to spread her wings. Then on her last day on the Manchester cobbles, she got a call from her agent informing her she had an audition for Doctor Who.
“I was like, ‘This will be a laugh to tell people I auditioned for this part,’ and I literally had no hope I’d get it,” she says. “They really loved my self-tape so they brought me in for a recall, and that’s where I met Ncuti for the first time. He is such a charismatic guy that I feel like he’d have charisma with a wall, so when I came out I was like, ‘I think we had chemistry but I feel he’d have chemistry with anyone.’ I really wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out, so when I was told I got the role it was a pretty special moment.”
The level of secrecy that surrounds casting on Doctor Who meant Gibson first went to work on the show at Cardiff’s Bad Wolf Studios covered by cloaks and umbrellas to keep her from being spotted. She even gave her driver a false name, so worried was she about revealing her true identity.
She completed all her costume fittings in Cardiff and then returned home with a script for an episode entitled 73 Yards, which was the first script she read for the show. Becoming the fourth episode of S14, it sees the Doctor vanish suddenly, leaving Ruby to search for him while always being followed by a mysterious woman from 73 yards away.
“I just read that script over and over again, and it grabbed me. It gave me Black Mirror vibes. It gave me Weeping Angels vibes,” remembers Gibson, referencing the monsters in all-time classic Who episode Blink. “It was just that creepy, really raw Doctor Who magic that it gives viewers. So it was a really special script for me to read and to know I’m going to lead it, I was like, ‘Get learning the lines.’”
Gibson found Ruby was a “really easy” character to lift off the page and bring to life, thanks to the “personality” of Davies’ words. And every time she received a new script, she would text Gatwa to share her thoughts.
“It was like we were watching along like a viewer, because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know we were going to head to the 60s [in The Devil’s Chord], I didn’t know my mum was going be Louisa in a coffee shop, played by the amazing Faye McKeever [as revealed in finale Empire of Death],” she says. “So it was a pretty suspenseful experience because you just didn’t know what was around the corner.”
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FIRST LOOK: Here’s Doctor Who star Millie Gibson and Joshua Orpin (Titans) in the first image released from The Forsyte Saga, a new adaptation of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte novels.
A sign of things to come appeared in Gibson’s debut episode, The Church on Ruby Road, as she first met the Doctor and then came face-to-face with the Goblin King, aboard his very own flying ship.
Working on that episode also gave the actor a taste of the show’s blend of visual and practical effects – with the Goblin King created for real and brought to life by six people working his arms and legs.
“That was incredible. You could act off that. I was singing to this goblin and I was like, ‘Great, yeah, this is normal,’” Gibson says. “It went from doing things like, for example, when we were looking at those dinosaurs in the Space Babies episode, there was nothing there. We were looking at a car park and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is beautiful.’ It was so hard.
“With things like that, you have to really convince yourself and use your imagination. With Sutekh as well [in Empire of Death], that was a tennis ball. So I was just crying hysterically at this tennis ball, being like, ‘Doctor, what is that thing?’ You go home some nights and you’re like, ‘What did I do for three hours? I was just looking at a tennis ball.’ So it’s a very different scale of either really working with the monster or having to use your imagination, but it’s the job, and it’s an incredible challenge and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
After starring in two iconic series – “I’m on a streak of only going for shows that run for more than 60 years,” Gibson jokes – the actor found her next challenge in The Forsyte Saga, a reimagining of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte novels first published between 1906 and 1921.
Commissioned by PBS Masterpiece in the US and picked up for UK audiences by 5, the six-part series follows the lives of the wealthy Forsyte family in 1880s London. Francesca Annis plays formidable Forsyte matriarch Ann, with Stephen Moyer as her eldest son Jolyon Senior, head of the family stockbroking firm Forsyte & Co. Danny Griffin plays his bohemian son Jo, Tuppence Middleton is Jo’s status-driven wife Frances and Eleanor Tomlinson plays Louisa Byrne, a Soho dressmaker and Jo’s first love.
The cast also includes Jack Davenport as Ann’s competitive younger son James, with Joshua Orpin as James’s shrewd and sometimes ruthless son Soames.
Gibson, meanwhile, enters the fray as Irene, a ballet dancer with whom Soames falls in love. Portraying a character with a different accent, with a different hair colour, “it was pretty special to completely change character like that,” she says. “A lot of people won’t know it’s me.”
Compared to a previous 2002 ITV adaptation (the source material was also adapted by the BBC in the 1960s), the actor says this new series is told from more of a woman’s perspective, with Poldark’s Debbie Horsfield writing the scripts and Meenu Gaur and Annetta Laufer directing. She also had to learn ballet and some French to play Irene, who grew up in Paris.
“A lot of viewers who know the original so well are going to be very surprised by our take on it because it’s more of an [introduction] to all the characters before the big stuff builds up,” she explains. “It’s a fresh take, so I hope you enjoy it. But I look completely different in it. I’ve got red hair.”
Gibson landed the role after her first audition over Zoom. But making The Forsyte Saga proved to be quite a change from the demands of starring in Doctor Who, where she would be on set every day, in almost every scene.
“It was long days, so being in an ensemble cast [for The Forsyte Saga] was a bit like, ‘Oh, I can lean back a bit.’ It was a bit more of a team because everyone had equal amounts of work to do. Doctor Who is such an incredible learning experience that it almost prepares you for any other job you do afterwards, because it won’t be as challenging. I really loved [Forsyte]. The cast are incredible. People like Tuppence Middleton, Eleanor Tomlinson, Jack Davenport… it’s a stellar cast. It’s an incredible one to be a part of for sure, and I learned a lot. I just had so much fun.”
No matter how long her Doctor Who journey continues, Gibson is now part of the worldwide fandom behind the show. She even took part in her first Comic-Con event last November, where she met former Doctor Colin Baker.
“It’s actually really beautiful to watch and be a part of,” she says. “To meet legends like him is pretty special, and to immediately bond over something [like Doctor Who] is privilege.”
Looking ahead, Gibson harbours ambitions to write, pointing to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag as the sort of show she might like to create one day. She’d also like to play a villain, and a Bond girl – “in my wildest dreams” – but she’s happy to face any roles that challenge her and allow her to bring a lot of energy and passion.
“I’ve got a lot to give when it comes to roles,” she adds. “I just have such a tunnel vision with it and throw myself into it entirely, whatever comes my way.”
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