Lambeth Fantastical - May 2026

MacKay and Mackie

This month I am celebrating two Lambeth actresses with similar surnames, born in the month of May over a century apart.

Ruth MacKay was born in Kennington on the 9th of May 1897 to a Scottish father and an English mother.

Her big breakthrough in theatre came in 1902 when she travelled to Australia to play the role of Iras in the stage production of Lew Wallace's best selling novel, Ben Hur, first published in 1880. It was a huge production which then embarked on a world tour.

Two years later she crossed the world in the opposite direction to take on a role in the play 'The Usurper' at the Knickerbocker Theatre on Broadway. It was here she met her second husband, fellow English thespian, Ellie Norwood. Norwood later rose to fame playing Sherlock Holmes on the big screen for Stoll Pictures in no less than three fifteen episode matinee serials and two feature length films.

MacKay's theatrical carreer in the UK included playing Potiphar’s Wife in 'Joseph and His Brethren' at the London Coliseum and starring at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow in the title role in George Bernard Shaw's 'Mrs Warren's Profession'.

Like Norwood Ruth MacKay transitioned into silent movies, appearing in a dozen cinema productions between 1915 and 1922, starting with 'Honeymoon for Three' in 1915 and culminating in 'The Scourge' in 1922.

She and Norwood later moved to Whistable in Kent, where they both died within a few months of each other in 1949.

Pearl Mackie was born on the 29th of May in Brixton in 1987 to a West Indian father and an English mother. The surname Mackie is from her mother's side of the family. Her maternal grandfather. Philip Mackie, who died 18 months before she was born, was the first Head of Drama for Granada Television and wrote the script for the award winning 'Naked Civil Servant' about the life of Quentin Crisp.

Mackie attended the Brit School in Croydon and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School where she recieved Carleton Hobbs Award for outstanding duologues in the school play based on Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses.

One of her first major roles was in the musical comedy 'Svengali' (2013), followed by a role in the National Theatre's production of 'The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night Time' in the West End in 2015. In between she made her television debut in a 2014 episode of the TV soap opera 'Doctors'.

Her big television breakthrough came three years later when she was cast as Bill Potts, companion to Peter Capaldi's Doctor Who, breaking new ground as the first companion to be openly gay. She played the role in thirteen episodes, culminating in the Christmas special 'Twice Upon a Time'.

Her most recent television appearance was in an episode of 'Death in Paradise' in 2025. In the same year she returned to the National Theatre to appear in their production of 'The Ballet Shoes'.

In 2024 she married her girlfried Kam Chhokar. The following year she became a patron for Queer Theatre, a company dedicated to LGBTQ+ storytelling, where she lends her support to initiatives such as acting classes.

My next Doctor Who Guided Walk exporing locations, stories, and connection with Lambeth will be in Waterloo on June 20th.

Full details here...

Doctor Who Walk