10 Doctor Who Background Actors Who Got Themselves Noticed

10. Naomi Ackie

Naomi Ackie is a Doctor Who actor so deeply embedded in the background that you'd be forgiven for forgetting she appeared in the show.

She played the girlfriend of Rigsy (and the mother of his child) in a brief phone call in Face the Raven, and also appeared in a deleted scene from that same episode. Set after Clara's heart-wrenching death, the scene shows her comforting a distraught Rigsy, for whom the Impossible Girl sacrificed her life.

Despite her only onscreen appearance being excised from the finished edit, Naomi Ackie has gone on to great things.

She recently received acclaim for her performance as Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance With Somebody, and also played Lando Calrissian's potential daughter Jannah in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

She'll also soon be seen opposite Robert Pattinson in Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17. Doctor Who's loss is very much Hollywood's gain!

In terms of Ackie's work with Disney on Star Wars, it's interesting to note that Letitia Wright – the MCU's Shuri and our brand-new Black Panther – also starred in Face the Raven as Anahson. Small universe eh?