Archie Panjabi To Play ‘Doctor Who’ Villain In New Season From Disney+ And BBC

Rosy Cordero
·2-min read

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy Award winner Archie Panjabi (Under the Bridge, Snowpiercer) will star as a villain in Season 2 of Doctor Who, sources tell Deadline. The BBC and Disney+ series is set to return in 2025.

Details regarding her character remain under wraps. BBC and Disney+ declined to comment for this story.

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Panjabi joins Ncuti Gatwa, who currently stars as the titular Time Lord; Millie Gibson, who plays his companion Ruby Sunday; and Varada Sethu, who will serve as the fifteenth Doctor co-companion Belinda Chandra.

In Season 1 starring Gatwa, The Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday travel across time and space, with adventures all the way from the Regency era in England, to war-torn future worlds. Throughout their adventures in the TARDIS – a time-traveling ship shaped like a police box – they encounter incredible friends and dangerous foes, including a terrifying bogeyman, and the Doctor’s most powerful enemy yet.

The long-running British series, which premiered on the BBC in 1963, follows an extraterrestrial being known as the Doctor. William Hartnell played the first Time Lord followed by 14 others including Tom Baker, Peter Capaldi, Matt Smith, David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker, Christopher Eccleston and Gatwa, among others.

The holiday special Joy to the World is set to air on Christmas Day on Disney+ and the BBC iPlayer in the UK, starring Gatwa alongside Nicola Coughlan as Joy.

Doctor Who is produced by Bad Wolf, with BBC Studios for Disney Branded Television and BBC. Russell T Davies is showrunner, executive producer and writer. Additional executive producers include Phil Collinson, Joel Collins, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter.

British actress Panjabi is an Emmy Award winner whose breakout role in the U.S. was in the 2002 film, Bend It Like Beckham, playing the character “Pinky Kaur Bhamra.” She followed with a variety of TV and film projects including The Constant Gardener (2005), A Good Year (2006), A Mighty Heart (2007) and San Andreas (2015) on the big screen and TV, BBC Two’s The Fall, BBC’s Shetland, NBC’s Blindspot, TNT’s Snowpiercer and most recently, Hulu’s Under the Bridge.

Panjabi is best known for playing “Kalinda Sharma” across six seasons of the hit CBS series The Good Wife. She received three Emmy nominations for the role including her first win in 2010 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She currently stars in and executive-produces the Peacock Original series, Departure, across the show’s three seasons.

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