Biography

When he was a toddler, his family fled the Rwandan genocide and moved to Scotland.

Before he was cast in Sex Education (2019), he was homeless for five months.

His first name is pronounced "N-shoo-tee".

On 8th May 2022, he was announced to play the Doctor in Doctor Who (2005). This makes him the first black or Asian to play the lead role in the show's history, the first to be born outside the UK, and the fourth actor raised in Scotland (after Sylvester McCoy, David Tennant and Peter Capaldi).

First person born outside the United Kingdom to play the Doctor.

I live with my best friend and his mum, who runs a salon in Tottenham and I'm there all the time. Whenever the young boys come in to get their trims, the conversations they have, they're like, 'Ah Mum, they're non-binary, you can't call them 'him'. It rolls off the tongue. It's amazing. That's the generation that's going to save the world.

[on Dunfermline school peers who set up a racist Facebook page about him] There's not many people that look like me in Scotland... It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't actually horrendous. Do I want to say this? Yeah, why not... it didn't really bother me that much because I knew. I was like, you can't know me and not like me. I was actually quite confused! I was like, what? These people don't like me? I was like, that's never happened before. So I was like, OK, fine. I'm just going to carry on being myself and they're going to fall in love with me sooner or later. And they did. It was really a good lesson to me about the difference between hate and ignorance. Obviously their behaviour was inexcusable. But at the same time, I was the first black person that they probably saw in real life. They [later] apologised profusely. Sorry is only a word, isn't it, but their actions spoke more than that. It wasn't that horrendous. My mum really toughened me up, as well. I grew up watching her move to this country with three kids on her back. She couldn't speak the language, didn't know the culture, no money, no nothing - and she raised all three of us. As cheesy as it sounds, I've been watching strength from young. My mum has dealt with so much shit.

[on facing adversity] I grew up in a working-class area, and I stood out - for my voice, my appearance, I did dance and things like that. But I always had faith in my charm. I always had faith in my charisma. I was like, 'If I can go around each group and befriend them all, then I'm all powerful.' Divide and conquer... It did work. I was all powerful!

[on Stonemouth (2015) People forget about that pivotal role in my career. Really changed things, that one. My mum said I looked like a baby strippergram. Dougie the cop! He will live in my heart forever.

I had never met another queer Rwandan person before. I thought I was the only one in the world.