No, Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) isn’t returning to Doctor Who

For any Doctor Who fans hoping for the return of Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble return, I’m sorry to inform you that it’s not happening, at least according to Tate’s spokesperson anyway. “I can confirm Catherine is very much not in Liverpool and is not on [the] Doctor Who set,” they told the Radio Times.

To backtrack a little, over the past week, rumors have been circulating that Catherine Tate was going to reprise her role as companion Donna Noble, who made her debut back in 2008 during David Tennant’s run as the Tenth Doctor. Apparently, there was speculation that Tate was filming scenes in Liverpool, where the Doctor Who team has been shooting season 13.

The rumors increased ten-fold when some fans claimed to have actually spoken to Tate, who supposedly told them she was in filming a secret project in Liverpool but was bound to an NDA and couldn’t reveal exactly what.

We can see why this rumor would catch on given that Doctor Who loves to bring back old characters; John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness returned in the most recent season after years away, for instance. But as you can see from the statement, Tate is flatly denying she was in Liverpool, much less on the Doctor Who set. We’ll cross our fingers anyway.

While Tate has been away from the series for the last 11 years, she has continued to play Donna Noble on a series of Big Finish audio dramas alongside David Tennant. Here’s hoping that we see her make an epic return to the iconic television series at some point, even if it’s not in season 13.

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h/t Digital Spy