“Doctor Who” and “Sex Education” star Ncuti Gatwa said in a recent interview with Attitude magazine that Black people have a pressure to be excellent that is disproportionate to white people, be it in Hollywood or other professions. The 31-year-old actor has noticed “white mediocrity” being celebrated, which is a luxury that does not exist for Black people since they must be “absolutely flawless” to even get a sliver of attention.
“We’re trained to be like, ‘If I’m not exceptional, I won’t be loved.’ Certainly, I think that was my thing,” Gatwa said. “So, yeah, I think I’m just learning now like, ‘You are allowed to be loved.’ You don’t have to be excellent or aspire to that term, ‘Black excellence.’ What the hell?”
“There’s so much white mediocrity that gets celebrated, and Black people, we have to be absolutely flawless to get half of [that] anyway,” Gatwa continued. “So, I’m slowly training myself out of that and being like, ‘No shit. You deserve love just for existing.’ And that has taught me to be a lot more loving as well, in a weird way.”
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Gatwa is the first Black actor to take on the eponymous role in “Doctor Who,” which he said resulted in people being “so angry over something so inconsequential” when his casting was first announced.
“We do see a shift happening in casting, in positions of power and in the status quo,” Gatwa added. “I mean, not a fast shift, things could tip over the other way a little bit quicker, but you see people kind of malfunctioning because things are changing.”
Gatwa revealed last year in a British Vogue interview that he has often had to contend with the industry making generalizations about him due to his appearance and cultural background. He said that a producer on the first season of “Sex Education” once approached him with a warning about ad-libbing lines of dialogue in character because the producer was afraid it just wouldn’t connect with white viewers.
“There were producers coming up to me like, ‘This ad-lib, I don’t feel like white people will understand it,’” Gatwa said. “And I was like, ‘It’s not for white people to understand. There are many white people in this show for white people to understand, but I want this other group of people to understand Eric. And that’s what you want too.’ And they got that. We were all constantly learning on that job.”
Gatwa returns in a new season of “Doctor Who,” streaming May 10 on Disney+.