Ncuti Gatwa Could Not Believe How ‘Angry’ Some People Were About His ‘Doctor Who’ Casting

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Ncuti Gatwa, the first Black Doctor in the (very) long-running “Doctor Who” series, did not get here without a fight. Gatwa recalled to Attitude magazine how some viewers were “so angry” about his casting, “something so inconsequential.”

It’s actually quite consequential, but in a good way.

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“We do see a shift happening in casting, in positions of power and in the status quo,” Gatwa said. “I mean, not a fast shift, things could tip over the other way a little bit quicker, but you see people kind of malfunctioning because things are changing.”

Things are changing for Gatwa personally as well. In his youth, the pressure he felt to “be excellent” was taxing — especially as “white mediocrity” was celebrated around him.

“We’re trained to be like, ‘If I’m not exceptional, I won’t be loved.’ Certainly, I think that was my thing,” Gatwa said. “So, yeah, I think I’m just learning now like, ‘You are allowed to be loved.’ You don’t have to be excellent or aspire to that term, ‘Black excellence.’ What the hell?”

The “Sex Education” alum continued, “There’s so much white mediocrity that gets celebrated, and Black people, we have to be absolutely flawless to get half of [that] anyway. So, I’m slowly training myself out of that and being like, ‘No shit. You deserve love just for existing.’ And that has taught me to be a lot more loving as well, in a weird way.”

Hollywood has taught him some lessons about race as well. Gatwa previously told British Vogue that during the first season of “Sex Education,” producers tried to shut down his ad-libbing as they felt it could potentially isolate white viewers.

“There were producers coming up to me like, ‘This ad-lib, I don’t feel like white people will understand it,’” Gatwa said. “And I was like, ‘It’s not for white people to understand. There are many white people in this show for white people to understand, but I want this other group of people to understand Eric. And that’s what you want, too.’ And they got that. We were all constantly learning on that job.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article quoted Gatwa as speaking about “Black excellence” and “white mediocrity” in the context of acting. He spoke of the racial disparity in general terms. IndieWire regrets the error.

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