Michelle Gomez makes unreasonable people seem entirely certain of themselves. Her physical confidence and willingness to look ridiculous make her a fine comic performer, though roles built chiefly around being peculiar can ask too little of her.
Fi1m perspective
An ordinary exchange becomes a potential problem when Michelle Gomez’s Sue White is involved. In Victoria Pile’s Green Wing (2004), she is so confidently unreasonable that there is little point waiting for embarrassment to check her. We laughed at that certainty, because Gomez gives Sue no apparent reason to doubt the behaviour everyone else has to deal with. This is what we rate about her: she commits to the absurdity without asking us to find the character charming.
Mark Heap’s Alan Statham makes awkwardness look painful; Sue gives us no such urge to reassure her. That difference matters in an ensemble comedy, where a collection of people being peculiar can soon become exhausting. Gomez’s forcefulness gives Pile another way to unsettle a conversation, alongside Heap’s discomfort. The hour-long episodes sometimes indulge the silliness for too long, but the performers’ willingness to lose their dignity is a sound reason to stay.
Earlier work in The Acid House (1998) and The Book Group (2002–2003) preceded the breakthrough of Green Wing. Playing Missy in Doctor Who (2014–2017), under showrunner Steven Moffat, let her put her physical energy and vocal flexibility to use in genre television. Her subsequent US work includes Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020) and The Flight Attendant (2020–2022). The settings change, but the frequent casting as dangerous or morally uncertain women keeps comedy close to menace.
Her return to film as Roz, an intimidating boss in Louis Paxton’s The Incomer (2026), puts her in another comedy with a taste for eccentricity. We liked the film’s attention to loneliness and belonging, and its three central performances, while finding some of the jokes laboured. Its dependence on the islanders being peculiar is a reminder that odd behaviour alone can only take a comedy so far.
Gomez has expressed concern about being confined to eccentric female characters. We would welcome parts that give her more to do than fulfil that expectation; the assurance she brings to Sue White deserves situations worth disrupting. For Gomez with colleagues capable of matching her, start with Green Wing.
Biography
Michelle Gomez is a Scottish actress. Born in Glasgow on 23 November 1966, she trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
She gained recognition for comedy roles in the series The Book Group (2002–2003), Green Wing (2004–2007) and Bad Education (2012–2013). Gomez played Missy in Doctor Who (2014–2017), receiving a BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She later appeared as Mary Wardwell / Lilith / Madam Satan in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020) and as Miranda Croft in The Flight Attendant (2020–2022).
Her film credits include The Acid House (1998) and the voice of Morag in The Loud House Movie (2021). She is credited as Roz in the 2026 film The Incomer.
