Doctor Who’s Mandip Gill was “shocked” by reaction to her casting
“Chris Chibnall didn’t make up people of colour!” Mandip Gill declares, as she looks back on the reaction to her casting in Doctor Who. The beloved BBC series has always been progressive, ever since its inception in 1963. But, in recent years, it’s been at the centre of debates around “political correctness” and “wokeness” on TV, largely as a result of its commitment to representation on screen. Gill found that out for herself when she made her Doctor Who debut in 2018 as Yasmin Khan, alongside Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor (the first permanent female incarnation of the Doctor), Tosin Cole, who played companion Ryan Sinclair, and Bradley Walsh as Graham O’Brien. “When our series came out, we had a lot of people going, ‘Oh, it’s so politically correct,’ and ‘They had to have a person of colour, two people of colour, an older person,’” Gill remembers, speaking exclusively to Radio Times as she returns to Doctor Who for brand-new audio adventures with Big Finish. “I was never bothered [because] I was so excited …




