On a brisk November afternoon, Doctor Who stars Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole and showrunner Chris Chibnall sit around a table in a suite in London's Soho passing around candy like giggling schoolchildren at the back of class. There is no sign in Whittaker of the pompousness you might expect to see in an actor playing one of television's most enduring and beloved characters. Or the diva behavior which, according to unverified social media claims, saw her storming off the set of the show's 12th season this summer.
In August, there was a rumble in the Twittersphere that Doctor Who producers BBC were unhappy with the direction of Season 12, that Chibnall had quit, and Whittaker had walked too. All this, said people who purported to have knowledge of the show's set, meant the production was in chaos.
This was all news to Whittaker and Chibnall who were deep into filming in Cardiff, Wales. "I didn't know about it," Chibnall tells Newsweek. "Somebody told me about six weeks after it happened. You just have to laugh." Somewhere in the reams of Season 12 footage, Chibnall and Whittaker say, is Whittaker's own reaction—the show's director of photography filmed her deadpanning to camera, "I'm still here." Whittaker jokes, "I wish I knew I could walk off a night shoot!"
That Doctor Who can create such waves over what is essentially fiction is, in some ways, a testament to the legacy of the series and the vociferous fanbase it inspires. "I don't know if it [happened] just because we weren't getting the show out this year," speculates Whittaker, referring to the show not airing a full season in 2019. But the actor says the turnaround between Season 11 and Season 12 was already so tight "we physically can't do it any quicker."
The wait is nearly over, however. Doctor Who Season 12 premieres on January 1 on BBC America and internationally. The new season begins with a two-parter, "Spyfall," written by Chibnall and guest-starring British acting giants Stephen Fry and Lenny Henry. The more serialized approach to Season 12, after a season of standalone adventures, is no accident. If Season 11 laid the groundwork for the new Who—it was Whittaker's first season as the Doctor, and the first to feature a woman in the main role—then Season 12 will ramp up the speed with more complex, season-arching storylines, cliffhangers and the return of popular Doctor Who villains, including the Cybermen and the Judoon.
"We're going deeper," says Chibnall. "The thing that happens with a series that runs for a relatively long amount of time is perceptions can say one thing ... the general perception based on research was that people were worried they wouldn't be able to access it if they didn't know a lot of previous information.
"What we needed was a year to go, 'You don't need to know anything, come on in.' Obviously with a new Doctor and new friends there's a really great moment to do that, and people really embraced that."
The camaraderie that has built between Chibnall, Whittaker, Gill and Cole is evident from their candy-swapping and conversational ease with each other. And if 10 months on set together isn't enough, the cast and crew also have myriad WhatsApp group conversations devoted to all things Who. "There's so many WhatsApp groups... we've got about 16 group chats," says Cole. Whittaker says co-star Bradley Walsh—absent today because of his other TV role as a quiz show host—sends the most messages to the cast, "but I'm the most paranoid." She adds, "I'm usually the neediest, if somebody don't reply to me..." but Cole completes her sentence, "She's like, 'Are you pieing me?'" It's another example of the easy shorthand between the stars. "We're really lucky that we get on and that can transfer into chemistry on film," says Whittaker. "It's a long time [on set] so it would have been awful if we had a bad egg or we didn't find each other funny."
So, unfortunately for the Who conspiracy theorists, it really does seem the show's set is a harmonious one with little drama to report off-screen. "That's the embarrassing thing," says Chibnall, "we have no stories. [It's like] 'We had a nice time, we worked quite hard.'" Alas, there's always next season to fuel the rumor mill. "We'll work harder at it," he jokes as our time together comes to an end.
Doctor Who Season 12 premieres January 1 at 8 p.m. on BBC America.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
