Anyone who has ever braved a spray tan knows that there are rules to follow. Number one? Avoid water in the immediate aftermath or you risk being plagued with troublesome streaks. That means no showers, no showers and certainly no tears. So when a freshly tanned Millie Gibson picked up her phone one evening last year to hear that she had been cast as Doctor Who's new companion, Ruby Sunday, her first priority was "not to cry it off," she laughs. "I thought, 'They're not going to be able to remake my face, so I'm going to have to hold this in!'"
The night in question took place just before the National Television Awards in October 2022, and Gibson, now 19, was preparing to walk the red carpet with her. Kroningsstraat castmates. She had played trouble-prone teenager Kelly Neelan in the ITV soap since 2019, but had decided to leave her regular gig on the cobbles at the beginning of this year. "I thought, 'I'm so young, why the hell not?' I have no mortgage, I have no children, I have no one to pay. So if things go wrong, at least I tried.'" Her final episodes had aired just a few weeks earlier. Then came "a group call from all three of my officers," she remembers. "Every time you get that, it means you're canceled or you have a great role." Fortunately it was the latter. "They said, 'Can you keep a secret?'" Silent as she was reunited with the Corrie gang the next day was "like torture," she admits. "But even after a drink I kept it down."
Gibson comes across as remarkably normal via Zoom on a chilly morning in Manchester: every potentially starry anecdote is offset by a hint of self-mockery. She's back home during a break from more filming Doctor who in Cardiff, wearing a gray Carhartt jumper adorned with a pendant with the letter "M"; her blonde hair, cut short in a bob that they will probably soon start calling "the Ruby," is tied back.
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The dawn of a new Doctor who The era is always big news, but this time the anticipation is palpable. Aspiring Doctor Ncuti Gatwa, beloved for his Bafta-nominated role as the sunny, funny Eric Effiong in Netflix's Sex education, is the first black actor to take on the role in the show's 60-year history. And Russell T Davies, the screenwriter responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed seasons in recent times WHO canon (he oversaw the series from its 2005 revival until David Tennant's departure in 2010) is back as showrunner. In another first, Disney+ will stream the show around the world, and the name in the credits inevitably means a generous boost to the budget: Davies has admitted that the anniversary specials with Tennant and Catherine Tate "cost more than most things I've ever seen." have done". made for the past 10 years combined".
So no pressure. In her soap days, Gibson jokes, people would often look at her on the street quizzically, as if to ask, "Do I know you from somewhere?" Are you someone's ex-girlfriend?" But when her first episode airs on December 25, she'll be on her way to household name status, joining the ranks of WHO companions such as Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman, Jenna Coleman and Karen Gillan. It was Gibson's father who introduced her to the show, and she remembers sitting down to watch Gillan zoom through space and time with 11th Doctor Matt Smith. So when she got the gig, "she reached out [Gillan] because I'm such a fangirl. She responded and was just very supportive, and gave me so much great advice.
Being a companion, she says, is like being part of "a community that only people who have lived through it understand." When her casting was announced during last year's Children in Need broadcast, then-doctor Jodie Whittaker's name "also appeared on my phone", with a congratulatory message that she describes as "like a hug in a text message".
Gibson grew up in Tameside, Greater Manchester, with two older brothers. No one in her family is in the entertainment industry, she says, but "personally speaking, they are quite creative" and always encouraged her dramatic tendencies. "During the lockdown we found all my baby videos and started watching them. And oh my god, [being an] actress was definitely in the blood from the start," she laughs. "I saw them thinking: 'Oh my God, what have you done Doing with me when I was younger?' I used to be CBBC presenters with my mum and do plays for them.
At the age of 11, she went to Oldham Theater Workshop, a drama school that has so many of them House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke, Anna Friel and Sarah Lancashire among the former pupils, and where she "learned how to gain confidence and actually act, rather than just pretend". Institutions like these, she says, are "a dying art," with some drama classes offered online. "Especially in the North, I think it's becoming a lot less important... People are trying to get in [to OTW] and they can't because it's too full. That's nice too, but there has to be more [places like these]."
During a performance at the Theaterwerkplaats she was scouted by an agent, which led to roles in the CBBC show Jamie Johnson and shows like ITV's Butterfly. However, finding work so young was far from easy. " I was in year 9, and that's when girls are the meanest, going through the [teenage] hormones," she says. "I remember coming back and saying, 'Hey guys, what did I miss?' and then no one spoke to me for months. I told my mom, 'I can't do another audition because the girls don't want to talk to me anymore.'" She thinks. "Being a child actor is so hard."
But despite those misgivings, there was little doubt that she would eventually devote herself to acting full-time, and not long after, she was given the opportunity to act. Corrie role. Was it difficult, I wonder, to balance the microdramas of teenage life with the, well, real drama of the streets, and the grueling schedule that came with it? During her soap years, Gibson says, her castmates were her real friends, which made things a lot easier. The way she tells it, the show's green room sounds enjoyably farcical, like the setup for a very meta sitcom.
"It was funny to see [co-stars] When they came in, they had a big bloody gash on their heads. It would be like, "Oh, are you okay, what are you doing today?" "I just got hit by a car!" 'Oh nice, isn't it? What's on the menu for lunch?' ...It seemed like a comedy sketch at times. As her storylines began to develop and become more intense as she got older, she adds, she dropped out of college.
She learned on her last day that she was ready for the role of Ruby Kroningsstraat, when she "felt a little sorry for myself and wondered if I made the right decision." Davies has said it was down to Gibson's versatility Kroningsstraat that made her a perfect fit for the genre-hopping role of the Doctor's companion. 'He said, 'I remember seeing Millie holding her stepfather hostage and dealing drugs And win Hairdresser of the Year, all in one episode'," she grins.
The secrecy surrounding the upcoming episodes is tight: so tight that even the cast didn't always know how the plots would play out. So what can she actually tell us about her debut without getting mired in spoilers? "Ruby has a relationship with the Doctor that I don't think the audience has seen before... She humanizes him and balances him out so that he becomes more like her, really - more innocent, more pure, more human, which is so beautiful to see. watch out," says Gibson. And, she teases, "there's a hidden secret in there [Ruby] that rolls through the entire series."
Intriguing stuff - and Gibson's admission that this season "has an element of it Black mirror in that, not so much at first, but it definitely gets darker" will almost certainly pique the interest of Whovians as well. She thinks the new episodes "will attract a lot of Gen Z viewers because they "move with the times and represent a lot of faces and themes that are really important to see on television." Davies has, of course, long been praised for his commitment to inclusive storytelling, especially his attention to LGBT+ stories, from Strange as folk Unpleasant It's a sin. His anniversary specials featured a trans teen girl, Rose, played by Heart stopper 's Yasmin Finney - which prompted 144 complaints from viewers (admittedly a small fraction of the 7.6 million who tuned in in total).
I cried my eyes out at a tennis ball for three hours
The outrage brigade will likely continue to clutch their pearls as the new series progresses. "There are so many controversial elements in this season - the good kind of controversy - and that's what we need to see on our televisions," says Gibson. "Some people," she adds, "may think, 'This isn't the Doctor who I know.' But I'm really excited to see it... It's really cool that they're coming up with these kinds of concepts and changing them."
Working with CGI creatures after the realism of Corrie was also a learning curve. The majority of Doctor who Gibson's aliens, Gibson points out, were created using practical effects, but she still had to undergo the rite of passage of the modern science fiction actor: emoting to an inanimate object on a stick. "I cried my eyes out at a tennis ball. It's little things like that that make me think, 'What am I doing with my life? Why did I just cry into a tennis ball for three hours?' Things like that are definitely a challenge, but all worth it." You certainly don't do that much at Rovers.
Gibson is well aware of what lies ahead, judging by the post- WHO careers of former comrades. Piper's stage work has earned her an Olivier Award, Gillan is a Marvel mainstay, and Coleman appears in countless prestige dramas. Gibson, meanwhile, would jump at the chance to work with Jodie Comer in the future ("She's a goddess!"), and after "such an obsession with Flea bag She'd love to get involved in something "as dark, humorous and juicy as that." But right now, her first order of business is watching her debut episode with her immediate family after dinner on Christmas Day (her brother, she says, has checked the entire back catalog to make sure it's fully prepared.) "We're going to add a lot of prosecco, just in case things don't go so well," she jokes. I'm sure she has nothing to worry about to make.
'The Church on Ruby Road' airs on BBC One on Christmas Day at 5.55pm Styling by Cher Coulter, makeup by Sara Hill and hair by Narad Kutowaroo
