Actress Millie Gibson addressed the tough position she was in when their were unflattering tabloid reports about her role on Doctor Who.

Gibson explained that, due to secrecy regarding series plot lines, she couldn’t address a tabloid report that she had been acting like a “diva” on the Doctor Who set and later reports that she had been “dropped” from the show.

“I couldn’t be like, ‘It’s a lie!’ [because] they’d be like, ‘Well, that’s spoilers,’” Gibson told The i Paper. “It was quite hard to stand up for myself without ruining the show. I was like, ‘Oh, this is horrific because it just looks like it’s true.’”

In fact, not only was Gibson not “dropped” but she was due to return to her Ruby Sunday companion role for a second series — and she knew this before the negative reports came out. The scrutiny for the actress, who had just turned 19, was very painful.

“Oh, it was awful,” she told The i Paper with pain in her voice. “What was frustrating was the amount of people that were like, ‘Oh, sorry, this has happened mate,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s not [happened], but thank you.’”

The pain was made easier to bear by her supportive co-star Ncuti Gatwa, who faced his own negative attention when he was cast as the Doctor.

“He’s had his time with that, and it’s just about just being able to try and shut it out.”

The i Paper interview also revealed that due to “blatant” comparisons with actress Billie Piper, who played Rose Tyler, another young, blonde Doctor Who companion from a working-class background, showrunner Russell T Davies insisted that Gibson chop her hair into a short bob so she wouldn’t look “a bit too much like Billie”.

Millie Gibson can next be seen in the period drama The Forsytes, on Channel 5 Monday, 20 October 2025 in the UK. In the US, the programme will air on PBS’ Masterpiece in 2026.