Reports have alleged that Gatwa will be leaving the show at the end of this season - but are they correct?
Finally, a non-tabloid source addresses this. I haven’t been keen on linking to The sun or The mirror because they’re just really shitty news media. This past week they have insisted that Ncuti Gatwa was “axed” after cancelling his appearance at the Eurovision finale.
Bear in mind, this after reporting for some time that the actor had already quit the show… BBC’s prompt denials just give the same rags another headline to run each time. Radio times keep a somewhat clearer outlook:
What is clear is that reports and rumours regarding Gatwa’s apparent departure have so far been conflicting, meaning they should be taken with a grain of salt, and we will have to watch The Reality War to find out for certain whether the Fifteenth Doctor is sticking around.
I could have sworn I read an article about a month ago that said they were going to cancel it. Maybe take a break for a while
If “they” is Disney, the worst they can do is decline to renew their distribution deal (which, granted, is worth a lot of money).
A full cancellation would be a BBC decision, and I just don’t think they’re prepared to do that.
At this point, I think if anything brings down Gatwa’s Doctor, it’ll be scheduling - it looks like an extended break between seasons is all-but-inevitable at this point, and he may simply move on.
I think this seems to be a curse that almost every TV series is facing right now. Even for runaway critical and popular successes from companies with loads of funding (Thinking Wednesday from Netflix, all the Star Trek shows from Paramount-CBS, countless animated projects from HBO-Max-Whatever-they’re-called-this-week) they seem unable to just commit to a production pipeline, everything ends up stalling, and it prevents the kind of success that the production companies wanted, all but ensuring they fail to meet expectations, as multi-year long waits for follow ups means that only the core fan group is going to want to follow up.
I don’t know how you solve that, other than grabbing the executives by the shoulders and shaking them until they realise it’s nonsense behaviour.
It genuinely doesn’t seem to be any ill will. Just last year I read an interview where he seemed upset at the thought of not meeting the Daleks 🙂
Would be nice if things work out and he at least gets the usual three seasons.
