John Bishop praises co-stars Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill with helping him overcome Doctor Who nerves

John Bishop has praised his ‘really supportive’ Doctor Who co-stars for looking after him when he joined the sci-fi show for the 13th season.

The comedian is playing Dan, a new companion of the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) but further details have been thin on the ground.

He joins star Jodie in her third outing as the Time Lord and Mandip Gill as her BFF Yaz following the exits of Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole in the New Year’s Day special Revolution of the Daleks. Both actors, who played Graham O’Brien and Ryan Sinclair respectively, had been with the show since 2018.

Of course John couldn’t give anything away about Dan, other than the fact he’s playing the character, but had nothing but good things to say about Jodie and Mandip helped him feel at ease about joining such a hugely popular series.  

He told Metro.co.uk: ‘I didn’t realise, I suppose until you’re in it as an actor, but also as a participant of something that is iconic, how big it is because you only know through the filter of your own experience. So I remembered as a kid, the reboot of it and I’ve always enjoyed watching it.  

‘Being in it and doing the things that you have to do to be in it,  green screen acting and so on, it’s been a massive experience.  

‘Jodie Whittaker and Mandip have been brilliant because they’re there all the time. They’ve been really supportive of someone like me coming in to it who’s not done a long running show like this before.’

Currently though John has teamed up with Line of Duty star and close pal Tony Pitts for a new podcast Three Little Words, inviting guests to speak in depth about four words that mean something to them.  

Past guests have included the likes of Paddy Considine, Robbie Williams and Corinne Bailey Rae, and coming up they have the pleasure of sitting down with TV presenter Alan Carr to hear his words.  

Tony shared the idea for the podcast came from his writing work and love of ‘bearing down into the meaning of words to really understand what they mean’.  

‘Sometimes people bring something funny, sometimes it’s heartbreaking, sometimes issues and so forth,’ he explained.  

‘We like to think we elevate it above “bants” but there’s a lot of low level sniping between us, low level arguments that run through each episode. I think we’ve both been surprised by how much we’ve got out of this whole experience. There’s been joy and insight. I think after we’d done the first couple of episodes it became apparent to us both that this is not something we’re doing during lockdown. It’s a long term commitment from both of us.’  

The actor also spoke about how the pandemic has ‘changed the landscape’ of his career with lockdown allowing him more time to focus on his own writing projects and ‘re-calibrate’.  

‘There’s no scripts, no lines to learn, no busyness of busyness. It just went,’ Tony told us, ‘and I just found myself walking more than I’ve ever walked in my life! About 20-odd-thousand steps a day.’

Series two of Three Little Words with John Bishop & Tony Pitts launches June 11 on Amazon Prime.

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