Doctor Who Boss Cheers His Tearful Time Lord: ‘Fans Get Up in Arms,' But ‘It's a Princely Performance'
In the latest Doctor Who season opener (pictured below, on the left), Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteen spilt a tear whilst processing the sudden death, at the hands of their robot overlords, of Sasha, a Belindachandra-1 resident he had grown quite close to in his six months on the planet.
It was far from the first time that this Doctor has been brought to a single, powerful tear (or more) — sometimes of the happy kind, but more often sad — in his 11 appearances thus far, dating back to December 2023's 'The Giggle' special (fronted by Gatwa's predecessor, David Tennant). And while some fans have speculated that the recurring waterworks are perhaps a clue that this especially emotional Time Lord is 'broken' in a way akin to Peter Capaldi's Twelve, current showrunner Russel T Davies is here to clear the air.
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'I mean, I remember the first time [Ncuti] did it, which is in [the 2024 Christmas special] The Church on Ruby Road,' Davies shared with TVLine. 'He thought Ruby (played by Millie Gibson) had vanished, been erased from time and space, which was astonishing, and he turned around in the studio and gave us that performance, which was absolutely spellbinding.'
Davies thus waves off the suggestion that the tears are scripted, as some clue to something amiss with this regeneration.
'You don't tell an actor whether to cry, not to cry, not an actor of that stature. Absolutely not,' he scoffs. 'It's like, you wouldn't tell anyone to laugh or not to laugh! It's beautiful thing he does, and it's a completely new thing for the Doctor, that opens doorways into whole new experiences.'
Davies says that his more emotional available Time Lord is but one of a multitude of ways one Doctor can vary from another, and how the long-running sci-fi series itself can be freshened up.
'Diversity is many things, and sometimes it's putting emotions on screen you haven't seen before, or that the Doctor has withheld himself from,' the showrunner posits.
'But it does make me laugh…. I know sometimes fans get up in arms about and they complain about it,' he notes. 'They're the same fans who say, 'Why don't you do something new with the program?' and you're like, hello.
'It's literally a princely performance,' he avows of Gatwa's take on Fifteen. 'I'm just here to watch and thank the lucky stars that I get to share in a princely performance like that. What an actor. Amazing.'Best of TVLine
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