Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: big finish, graham norton, hammersmith, london, whoopi goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg Still Wants To Play Doctor Who But Knows Why She Won't

Doctor Who fan Whoopi Goldberg has been saying for years that she's wanted to play the Doctor, but she knows why it probably won't happen.

On Thursday night, Whoopi Goldberg took to the stage of London's Hammersmith Apollo – now known soullessly as Eventim – for the first time in three years and on the eve of her seventieth birthday. She gave us stand-up, crowd work, and even hugged a man who had tattoos of her all over his body. She was funny, filthy, and fascinating, a life well lived, and still being lived, despite the people whose life support she has had to pull over the years. For the second hour, she sat down and was interviewed by Graham Norton about her life, which only got as far as Ghost. I presume we got the second half in Cardiff the following night. But he did bring up something that Whoopi Goldberg has mentioned before, her desire to play the lead Doctor Who. And yes, she has mentioned it a lot of times.

• In 2017, she told The Sun newspaper that she was "dying" to appear in the show and hoped BBC bosses would offer her a cameo."I always hope when I come to England the BBC will say, 'Hey, we want you to do something.' I would love that", she said.
• In 2019, she told David Tennant on his David Tennant Does a Podcast that she pitched the BBC to be a New York-based Doctor Who. "I wanted to be the first female Doctor … the American version of Doctor Who ends up in New York and it's me. The idea of that so made me happy. But they were like 'Um, no.' I was like, 'OK, I'm cool. I ­understand."
• In 2021, she told SFX magazine that she had talked it over with Tom Baker. "I wanted to be the first female Doctor, but they have one. I said to him, 'I love the idea of an American Doctor Who'… I'm still trying to do it."
• In 2021, at the Edinburgh TV Festival, accepting the International Icon Award, she said, "I wanted to be Doctor Who, and I still do. I think it would mean an evolution into being American, and I don't know that that's correct for Doctor Who. I don't know, I can usurp that. As much as I love it, I love watching it still in all the iterations." But adding "There are certain things that are blatantly all English. Doctor Who is like that to me. It's like Marmite. It's very English and needs to stay that way."
• In 2023, talking to Graham Norton for Virgin Radio, she said, "I am busy, but if a random Doctor Who came along, I could do it… I understand I'm not going to be the new Black Doctor Who, but… I can be in Doctor Who… I think I could be Who's cousin! Boo Who!"

At the Hammersmith Apollo this week, she reiterated her dream as well as her love of watching the show, both when she was younger with Tom Baker and now with Ncuti Gatwa. She also expressed her strong desire to play a version of the character, but that she had come to terms with the fact that she wouldn't, calming the crowd down, stating that the character could and should remain British. And that she understood and appreciated that more now.

Of course, that has got me thinking. When last we saw the Doctor, he had regenerated into the actress Billie Piper, who played Rose and The Moment previously on Doctor Who. What happens now, we have no idea, but there would certainly be room for Whoopi to play The Doctor if only as a cameo, if Billie decides she's not going to do that role full-time. Recall how Steven Moffat wrote the finale of The Curse Of Fatal Death with Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, and Joanna Lumley in successive short order… maybe they could do that again, with all manner of Doctors who want a go?

But failing that, the audio drama producer Big Finish has shown it can go to extraordinary lengths with the BBC license, including actors playing alternate regenerations of the Doctor, such as the first actual female Doctor Who played by Arabella Weir in Doctor Who Unbound: Exile. How about a nineties-set Doctor Who, in New York, where it is a Whoopi Goldberg alternate version of the Eighth Doctor Who, who sits up in the New York morgue, affected by the world around her as so often happens when the Doctor takes on a new form, now as a black New Yorker trying to work out where, when and who she is, instead of Paul McGann? And a whole different timeline that follows? Maybe I should pitch Big Finish… I think Whoopi Goldberg would work for scale on something like this. She's just done three weeks in an Italian TV soap opera because they asked her…

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