Michelle Gomez: No ‘sexual chemistry’ with Doctor Who

DOCTOR Who actress Michelle Gomez said she never imagined any sexual chemistry between her character Missy and the Doctor, but was aware of how daunting her role as a female time lord would be.

Michelle Gomez, left, with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. Picture: BBC/Simon Ridgway

Gomez said she realised the consequences on the dynamic of the Doctor and Missy’s relationship when she is revealed to be the female regeneration of John Simm’s time lord, the Master.

“I’m a Doctor Who fan first and foremost, and then an actor. I knew what it meant to change the Master’s gender. But I didn’t want to be daunted by that. I couldn’t think too deeply about it,” she said. Gomez, 49, denied the idea of sexual chemistry between Missy and the Doctor. “You’re reading into it something I’ve never even thought of,” she said.

She dismissed the kiss that her character and Peter Capaldi’s Doctor share in the second to last episode of the eighth series. “Oh, she’ll snog anything! She’d snog a dalek,” she said.

The Master is the arch-enemy of the Doctor and, as Missy, attempted to turn deceased humans into an army of Cybermen at the end of the last series of the show. Her character was seemingly vaporised, but returned in the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who on Saturday.

The Green Wing actress, who has lived in New York for the past eight years, also spoke about her difficulties of getting work in America as a woman over 35. She said she fell between two categories: “I’m not young and I’m not gnarled. So we tend to disappear.”