The actress was once told that the Doctor couldn’t be Black.
Jo Martin made history in 2020 as the first Black actor to play the Doctor for her portrayal of Ruth Clatyon, an unplaced incarnation of the Doctor – better known as the Fugitive Doctor.
Since then, Ncuti Gatwa has become the latest actor to take on the Time Lord in a full-time capacity, waving a flag for people of all walks of life and creed, to show anyone can be on screen.
Now, in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com, Martin explained that she still gets “goosebumps” thinking of her casting.
“Colin Baker is my Doctor, I’ve been watching Doctor from then,” she said. “I’d use all my mum’s foil to make up my cousins [as Daleks], and I’d be the Doctor, they’d say, ‘But you can’t be the Doctor, the Doctor’s not a girl, the Doctor’s not Black’.
“And so when this job came up, and it was revealed to me who I was really gonna be – because when I originally auditioned no one told me what I was auditioning for.
“I think if I had known, I would have blown the audition, I would have been too nervous. I would have been like, ‘Oh my god, it’s too much, too big.'”
Reflecting on the role, Martin told RadioTimes.com that it made her think of “the little girl in [her].
She continued: “The amount of messages I’ve had from people from around the world, from Brazil to Australia to America to this country, people of colour who have reached out, females of colour, who have just said, ‘Thank you.’
“And I’ve shed many a tear about it, but happy tears because I’m also jealous, because I wish I’d had this when I was young.
“But everything has a journey to go on, and times change slowly, but they do change, and although you know the recent history we had recently with people going mad on the streets of this country was quite something, was quite an eye opener to think that the colour of someone’s skin is still going to be a problem.
“But hey, we’ve got our first Black Doctor among all of that and I take my hat off to the BBC and all who sail with that show that they made that choice.”
Martin isn’t the only person to have praised the BBC for its decision in casting Ncuti, with the show’s first director Waris Hussein calling the casting a ‘victory’.
In celebration of the show’s 60th anniversary last year, Hussein told Radio Times magazine: “It does. I was the first British Asian in my field to be doing what I was doing. What did worry me internally was working on set and all these people watching me.
“I’d think to myself, ‘They’re waiting to see whether I’ll fall on my face. But I’m not going to fall on my face.'”
Speaking further of her casting as the Doctor, Martin added: “And the fact that you’ve got a middle aged woman, it just should never happen really, because we’re invisible if you’re a woman past 35, if you’re a woman that’s not a size 8, if you’re a Black woman, you’re kind of in the sideline, you’re invisible.
“So I tick all of those boxes, and guess what? I’m visible, and I’m very proud to fly that flag.”
Martin is also returning to the timey wimey world of Doctor Who as she makes her Big Finish debut in upcoming audio drama Once and Future: Coda – The Final Act.
The audio drama will be the eighth and final chapter of Big Finish’s epic 60th anniversary celebrations, and will see the Fugitive Doctor clash with the War Doctor, voiced by Jonathon Carley.
