From Doctor Who’s demise to James Bond: 8 revelations from Russell T Davies’ memoir

Isobel LewisThu, October 8, 2026 at 11:43 AM UTC

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In his new memoir ‘The Queerest of Folk’, the Welsh screenwriter talks Doctor Who’s past (and future), turning down two major franchises and an ‘uneasy’ meeting with Harvey Weinstein

Russell T Davies’ memoir has finally hit shelves, with the Doctor Who and It’s A Sin showrunner telling all about his decades working in the TV industry.

The Queerest of Folk sees the Welsh writer, 63, reflecting on his start in television at Granada, his life as a gay man in Manchester, the death of his husband Andrew Smith in 2018, and all the stars he worked with along the way.

Many pages are dedicated to Doctor Who, of which Davies was a childhood fan and dreamed of one day writing. He looks at bringing the show back in 2005 after years of discussions with the BBC, returning to the franchise to work with Disney, and what went wrong in the process.

Below, you’ll find eight of the biggest revelations from the The Queerest of Folk...

Davies memoir ‘The Queerest of Folk’ was released on Thursday (Getty)Doctor Who didn’t work on Disney ‘from day one’

When the idea was first floated of getting a US streamer involved for the 2023 anniversary and subsequent 2024 reboot of Doctor Who, Davies admits that he had “some fear” about such a company “ruining” the show. Netflix, Amazon and Disney were all approached, with the latter feeling like the “impossible” option. Yet it was Disney that took on the show, with Davies swiftly realising that the team had no real knowledge of the series.

“As we began to work with Disney, we realised they didn’t know the slightest thing about Doctor Who – only what I’d told them,” he writes. “It all seemed brand new to them. In one meeting, I mentioned the famous Steven Moffat episode ‘Blink’ – the one with the Weeping Angels – but they’d never heard of it. They went away and watched it and came back saying, ‘Hey, great episode!’ I thought, yes, but . . . how have you bought Doctor Who without watching ‘Blink’?!

Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor during the BBC-Disney deal era (BBC Studios/Bad Wolf)

Reflecting on the show’s time on Disney, which served as an international distributor for the series, Davies wrote: “It just didn’t work on Disney+. Simple as that. To be honest, it didn’t work from day one. It’s an old show. It’s not particularly well known in America. It’s never been on the level of Star Wars or Star Trek, and maybe it didn’t suit supersizing. And we had that complicated launch, starting with the sixtieth anniversary, then a Christmas Special, then a gap before the series proper. But no one could ever come up with a better, more financially secure plan.”

Billie Piper was ‘crying in the cupboard’ on set amid Chris Evans divorce

When classic sci-fi series Doctor Who was first brought back by Davies in 2005, the casting of former teen pop star Billie Piper as a companion for Christopher Eccleston (and eventually Tennant) was considered an inspired choice. And it brought even more attention to the show as Piper was in the midst of her divorce from presenter Chris Evans.

Billie Piper with David Tennant’s Doctor

“When we had the read-through for episode two, ‘The End of the World’, Billie was going through her divorce from Chris Evans, the most public divorce you could possibly imagine,” Davies recalls. “She was crying in a cupboard and I thought, oh, God, she’s going to leave! But she just kept going like a demon… She was a pop star, and pop stars are the hardest working people in the world.”

Davies turned down James Bond and Star Wars

Following his first departure from Doctor Who, Davies remained on the BBC Studios payroll, meaning he couldn’t work on other projects. In that period, “quite insanely”, he was asked if he could rewrite the director Sam Mendes’ script for James Bond film Skyfall. “Why didn’t I do that? I’m not particularly into James Bond. So I just said no,” Davies wrote. “When I eventually watched Skyfall, I thought, damn it, that’s exactly the James Bond film I would have written. I’m quite sure I’d have been one of twenty-seven writers being sacked after two months, but I still feel like the man who turned down the Beatles.”

Davies turned down the chance to write the script for ‘Skyfall’ (PA Wire)

It’s not the only major franchise Davies said no to; he also declined an offer from George Lucas to work on an adult Star Wars show. “I thought it was the wrong thing for me to do. I didn’t want to be the science-fiction man for ever,” he explained. The show never got made in the end.

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Davies blames online leaks for ‘destroying’ Doctor Who

Discussing his second stint in the Tardis, Davies wrote: “When it comes to science fiction, the problem of leaking online is now so vast and so pernicious it threatens to ruin everything. And it’s more ferocious than ever with Doctor Who.” Discussing the choice to have Gatwa’s Doctor regenerate into Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler in what would go on to be the last episode for some time, he continued: “Every decision we ever made, every single plot twist, every single moment, all the way up to the appearance of Billie in the very last seconds of the last series finale, was leaked.

Billie Piper’s return to ‘Doctor Who’ in 2025 leaked months before the show aired (BBC)

“It’s absolutely extraordinary, and I swear, it did a lot to destroy the profile of the show. It introduces a cynicism among fans, because they’re not surprised by anything any more. Their response to a leak is weariness, an instant assumption that whatever has been leaked won’t work. They instantly imagine the worst version of it, and then, when they eventually see it, it inevitably confirms their bias.”

‘Uneasy’ exchange with Harvey Weinstein one year before #MeToo

While trying to secure funding for his 2016 TV adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Davies crossed paths with now-disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, who tried to influence the film’s casting. “At one point, [producer] Faith Penhale and I even had a conversation with Harvey Weinstein. And honest to God, I’m not just saying this in hindsight, but the baleful power of the man was there to see,” he wrote. “He wanted Cara Delevingne to be in it as Hermia. ‘Wouldn’t that be great?’ he asked.

Harvey Weinstein, pictured in 2016 (Getty)

“Even on that phone call, from the way he spoke to Faith, the one woman present, you could hear a world of darkness. I’ve spoken to a lot of executives in my time, and can’t remember most of the conversations, but I remember Weinstein very clearly, because I felt uneasy. The amount of power he wielded was unnerving. It was hard to say no. He was a potential source of funding. But after that call I immediately back-pedalled away from him because I could feel trouble.”

Christopher Eccleston auditioned for Queer as Folk long before Doctor Who

While he became the face of Doctor Who upon its revival in 2005, Christopher Eccleston actually auditioned first for the role of Stuart on Davies’ earlier show, Queer as Folk. “We tried everyone,” Davies wrote. “Christopher Eccleston auditioned for it, but he was a bit too old. He told us himself he wasn’t quite right.”

Eccleston with Billie Piper

The role ended up going to Aidan Gillen, who Eccleston had, in fact, recommended they see. “He said, ‘What you need is a man who acts like he’s got a c**k. And that’s Aidan Gillen.’ And he was absolutely right. In the audition room, Aidan became this inscrutable, dark, intense, unfriendly man, which is Stuart to the gills.”

Davies keeps a knife by his door after ‘fearing for my own safety’

Davies wrote about beginning to “fear for my own safety” amid an increasingly hostile environment in the UK. “In the last five years, things have happened at work and on my own doorstep that I’m not going to describe here, in case that makes them happen again, but I became aware that some people had got hold of my address,” he wrote. “There are people out there who genuinely hate what I write, and who see me as the enemy. Now I’ve got a knife by my front door. A kitchen knife, ready to use. I know it’s ridiculous. Frankly, if I picked up that knife and tried to use it, I’d probably end up stabbing myself.

Davies revealed he keeps a knife by his door for protection (AFP/Getty)

“But that’s the thought process I’ve gone through; as a gay man and a political voice in today’s society, am I completely safe in my own home? I think I’m 95 per cent secure. But that 5 per cent makes for a really interesting conversation. That 5 per cent has made me keep a knife by the front door. That’s the world we live in.”

Scripts for Gatwa’s third Doctor Who series had been written – before Disney pulled the plug

Doctor Who spent its second series in limbo, with Disney eventually pulling the plug, meaning a third series with Gatwa never aired. In his memoir, Davies writes: “Three scripts were fully written for it, and it breaks my heart they won’t be seen. We had a brilliant story set during the Great Fire of London, written by the powerhouse team of Laurence Clark and Jack Thorne, and we should have had the budget to do it properly, with the flames and panic and everything. And we had a brutal horror story, written by the brilliant Lydia Adetunji, set on a NASA-type space station, all about trypophobia – look it up, it’ll make you shiver!

Ncuti Gatwa and Jonathan Groff in ‘Doctor Who’ (James Pardon/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios)

“There was a really lovely episode set on a council estate in the middle of Manchester. That would have been the ultimate place to bring the Doctor; I would have just loved to see that. It was written by Sharma Angel-Walfall, who’s lived that life. It was like Doctor Who meets the film Rocks.”

Davies said that he had also planned to bring back the writer Juno Dawson and Jonathan Groff’s character Rogue, who served as a romantic interest for Gatwa’s Doctor. “That sequel was forever getting postponed. It didn’t appear in series two, but I would have tried for it in series three,” he writes. “ We were talking about Rogue in an Eighties story, maybe set in Blackpool with video arcades at its centre. So we had a lot of fabulous ideas, some fully fleshed out, with a Dalek four-part epic to end the series. We were ready to go.”

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”