'Doctor Who's 14th Doctor Announced As Ncuti Gatwa

After the BBC turned new Doctor Who casting announcements into media circuses in the past decade, Bad Wolf is making its new tenure felt right away. On Sunday, May 8, with little fanfare and no prior warning, the BBC Twitter account revealed showrunner Russell T. Davies chose Sex Education's Ncuti Gawta to play the Fourteenth Doctor. The 29-year-old is the first Black actor to star in the series and the third-youngest actor to play the Timelord. Only Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor (age 26) and Peter Davies' Fifth Doctor (cast on his 29th birthday) were younger when they landed the role.

Born Mizero Ncuti Gatwa, the actor initially hails from Nyarugenge, Kigali, Rwanda, but moved to Scotland as a child and was raised in Edinburgh and Dunfermline and trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. Fans of Horrible Histories may remember him from 2019's Horrible Histories: The Movie, where he played Timidius. But most Americans (and Netflix viewers) know him best as Eric Effiong from Sex Education, where he co-stars as the gay BFF of Asa Butterfield's insecure Otis. Eric is open about his identity at school but privately struggles to be accepted at home by his religious Ghanaian-Nigerian family.

Gatwa won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor in Television and has been nominated for three BAFTA Television Awards for Best Male Comedy Performance for his turn on Sex Education. The British comedy is popular with Gen Z and boasts Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs among those who appear in the adult cast. However, it is not a mainstream hit in either the U.K. or the U.S. Landing the role of the Fourteenth Doctor and set to succeed Jodie Whittaker this coming fall during the BBC's Centennial Doctor Who special is a whole new level of fame.