Meet Billy, the New Companion in ‘Doctor Who’ Played by Pearl Mackie

Clara Oswald’s time with the Doctor has come and gone. Now that Jenna Coleman has departed her role in Doctor Who, the long-running sci-fi series on BBC, the search for a new companion to travel alongside Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor across the cosmos commenced behind closed doors. And the search has ended. Meet Billy, portrayed by Pearl Mackie. A lengthy preview was uploaded by surprise on the show’s official social media channels. (Note: For some reason the perfectly normal YouTube link isn’t embedding, so you’ll have to click here to check it out.)

Who’s Pearl Mackie? That’s a good question! She’s a relatively new actress with very few notable roles prior to Doctor Who. If you happen to be a British soap fan (aren’t we all?), she played Anne-Marie Frasier in the BBC One series Doctors — what a coincidence! — in 2014. A year later she performed in a stage adaptation of the 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the National Theatre’s West End. And now, she’s on Doctor Who!

So far, so great. Capaldi and Mackie have some great chemistry that I’m excited to see play out, especially with how totally worn out Coleman seemed to be. I don’t know how much longer Capaldi has in his contract, but I’m glad Doctor Who — a behemoth of a sci-fi franchise — is willing to cast people of color if they stubbornly insist on keeping their Doctor an old white guy (although Capaldi has been the best old white guy, for what it’s worth). Doctor Who will be a star-maker for Mackie, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Billy.

Doctor Who returns to air for its tenth season in 2017. The show is expected to continue until 2020.