Millie Gibson Interview

For three weeks in 2022, Millie Gibson’s ringtone setting was locked on loud. She was on tenterhooks for a call. “They were the most torturous three weeks of my life,” the now-19-year-old tells me. The Greater Manchester-hailing actor wasn’t simply awaiting any telecommunication, but the type with the potential to upend her life. The type she wanted to be poised and in an optimal environment to receive, “like a nice quiet coffee shop or at home,” she explains. 

“But, of course, the day I get a spray tan is when they ended up calling,” she laughs. As she dried off, Millie was invited to join her three agents on the line. “I was like, ‘Oh god, this can't be good,’ or ‘This can be really good.’” Thankfully, the latter would ring true, and when she answered, they’d tell her that she’d bagged the part she’d auditioned for three weeks prior, incidentally one of the most iconic on TV – Doctor Who’s latest companion – plucky, wide-eyed Ruby Sunday. “They said ‘Can you keep a secret?’” she continues. But how could she possibly sit on the news that she’d been offered such a storied role, in a genius partnership with Sex Education’s Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor, who Millie now refers to as ‘my Ncuts’), on the longest-running sci-fi television series in the world?

Well, precisely, because it’s Doctor Who, the longest-running sci-fi television series in the world — an account of a time-travelling, planet-hopping timelord that has mesmerised audiences for over 60 years – and, as such, is a magnet for fan and press speculation. At once part of the furniture in living rooms across the country for generations, it’s also an object of cult devotion, with an ardent community driving it (nicknamed the “Whovians”) who embrace conventions, comic-cons and a magazine with over 600 issues all in the show’s name. When we meet in a teeming East London photography studio, Millie stationed in a make-up chair ahead of her Rollacoaster shoot, the third episode of the series has just been released. The fourth, “73 Yards”, which sees Millie shed Gatwa for the first time, as the Doctor disappears, leaving Ruby isolated in an alternate timeline with an ominous figure following her, will be lapped up by critics and viewers a few days later. It’s fair to say that she’s swiftly emerged as a fan favourite as she settles into the sizeable, legacy-laded companion’s shoes, occupied by the likes of Billie Piper, Karen Gillan and Jenna Coleman since the show’s relaunch in 2005. “The fans, bless them, defend me with their lives even though they don't know Ruby Sunday that well,” she says, “which is such a nice feeling to have.”

But, initially, her casting was Millie’s secret to keep, until she met the public for the first time in November 2022, stepping out of a life-sized TARDIS, live on national TV, on the BBC’s annual fundraising telethon, Children In Need. On the approach, she had time to reflect on the magnitude of what she was about to take on. Whilst she had spent her teenage years varnishing her acting prowess on another sexagenarian British TV fixture, playing troubled teen Kelly Neelan on Machester-set soap opera Coronation Street, Doctor Who reflected both a role and stage of proportions more incalculable than she’d encountered before. For one, she simply has a far bigger stake in the sci-fi drama – the regular cast consists almost solely of Ncuti and Millie, and the production’s scale makes for a capacious playground primed to house the kaleidoscopic greatness of their performance. Additionally, the show’s refreshed international ambition, led by a collaboration between the BBC and Disney+, means this is the first season to release simultaneously worldwide, acquainting Millie with audiences across the pond while the UK gets to know her even better. She and Gatwa found their way onto the Good Morning America sofa recently as part of a stateside press tour in advance of the show’s premiere. “The [American] humour is different,” she smiles. “They laughed at different bits. I was like, ‘Oh, you find this bit funny?’” 

For Millie, a mood board in navigating the show’s size with aplomb would feature the late 2000s work of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan heavily, the 11th doctor and his companion Amy Pond, respectively, who are synonymous with her early memories of watching with her Dad. “I just remember their chaos,” she enthuses. “I loved how manic and neurotic Matt Smith's doctor was. It made me giggle. And I just love their love for one another. I think when you get a companionship like that it just makes it so much more enjoyable to watch.” 

Indulging in the legacies of companions of yesteryear could compound the pressures associated with taking on the part herself, however. “It is an intense role to conquer,” Millie says, “you’ve kind of got to earn the right to be it.” But thankfully, she more than had the backing of Russell T Davies, the returning show-runner and head writer who last helmed the programme following its noughties revival, with the likes of David Tennant and Piper at its heart, in-between penning some of the 21st century’s most seminal screen dramas (It’s A Sin, Queer As Folk and A Very English Scandal). However, far from simply taking a punt on a young Millie in trusting her with the role, Davies, a regular Coronation Street viewer, was already a fan ahead of her audition. “Thank god he was a fan,” she laughs. Naturally, the feeling was mutual. “I think every person in Britain is familiar with Russell's work. I’d watched It’s A Sin in lockdown and that had been my thing,” she says. “I just think he's one of the most magical writers there is. Reading his scripts is like reading a mini book.”

And, “People can be kind of snobby to soap actors, so for him to give me that opportunity to show people what else I can do is really, really nice.” As if by kismet, the initial request to audition for Doctor Who was received on her last day of filming on the street’s famous cobbles. As she approached leaving the soap, which she joined aged just 14, “I thought I’d get a cough and a spit in a drama or something and call it a day,” she smiles, “and my mum and dad would be like, ‘I told you so, you shouldn’t have left.’” On the contrary, whilst soap is, of course, a fertile ground for expansive acting careers and the platforming of vital storylines, it seems inevitable that Millie, who seems destined for a place among the crop of the UK’s most in-demand, international-facing talent, would swiftly outgrow her award-winning turn within the confines of the genre. But the platform offered indispensable training that has armed her with the equivalent of a drama school education by the time many of her peers are still enrolled in classes.  “It just taught me how to be quick and have that pace,” she says, “learning lines at the rate that we did…it was like my college.” 

Prior, she’d first honed her skills at Oldham Theatre Workshop, the youth theatre group in the Greater Manchester town which “made me want to be an actress,” she says. Acting was a path seemingly pre-destined from infancy, however. “If you watch my baby videos from when I'm like three, then you can definitely tell there's a drama queen brewing.” The drama workshops were initially just a means of bolstering her confidence for school, but “I just fell in love with theatre and that whole world.” Meanwhile, her mum would practice accents with her and acquaint her with the canon of vintage musical film offerings, à la Grease and Dirty Dancing, etc. By her teenage years, she was “curious, craving a new bit of fun and dying to get out of high school,” she says. So the Coronation Street set became a home away from home as she navigated youth, her craft, and the thick of the pandemic era, with an additional family gained in the process via its cast. 

The experience of embarking on the filming schedule for Doctor Who, in Cardiff, the nucleus of the show’s production, lacked such familiarity, however. She spent the first period filming “73 Yards”, alone, as Gatwa wrapped up commitments on Netflix young adult phenomenon, Sex Education. “I didn't really know anyone,” she says. “It was one of those where I kind of just had to pick up my feet and go, ‘Right, gotta do this.’ It didn’t really feel like Doctor Who, but as soon as Ncuti walked onto set, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot what this was.’” The pair had only met previously at a chemistry read, but from then, “It was just like a magnet,” she says. I left the [chemistry read] and I was like, ‘Wow, we had really good chemistry but does he have chemistry with everyone cause he’s just so amazing and lovely?’” A shared northern humour – Gatwa grew up largely in Scotland – and “a bit of sass, a bit of curiosity,” is foundational in the pair’s bond, according to Millie. “I think our relationship is very similar to Ruby and the Doctor’s which is a nice thing to portray on screen. Just the way we talk to one another, how he's always calling the villains ‘babes’. It’s just hilarious.” 

There are parallels also with fiction in the personal journeys Millie and her character are undergoing. Generally plucked from mundanity to become a fish-out-of-water in the fantastical reality of the Doctor’s adventures, often the full spectrum of the companion’s personalities only unfurls as the season progresses. “All the experiences that she's facing just make her adapt as a person,” she says. “And I think she's learning from the Doctor and the underdogs that she meets.” It’s an experience of growth and exploration that Millie can relate to, enhanced also by the fact they’re the same age. As she highlights, “I think Ncuti, himself, in Sex Education, was playing a 16-year-old and he was 30.” But Ruby is 19 and so is Millie, something of an industry rarity. “I think because I’m experiencing everything for the first time, like Ruby, that’s why she’s so special to me,” she concludes. 

Time travel looks set to stick around in Millie’s reality for the foreseeable. She’s just been announced, when we chat, as a cast member on a TV adaptation of early 20th century-set John Galsworthy novels, The Forsyte Saga. And, thereafter, she’d love to hone in on her aptitude for comedy. “I love things like Fleabag,” she admits. And, if that wasn’t enough, she’s also recently purchased her first home, so the demands for getting lost in interior design are aplenty; she’s got a particular penchant for the chunky, colourful furniture of Stockholm-based designer Gustaf Westman at the moment. However, after her Rollacoaster shoot, she won’t be heading to her abode, but rather back to Cardiff, as she balances promotion of the current season of Doctor Who with the production of season two. “I can’t tell you anything about season two,” she says diligently before I ask. “But, there’s a lot more beauty and danger to come.” It feels impossible to doubt her—she does, after all, have the universe at her fingertips.