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The single demand that David Tennant requested when he was offered the role of Doctor Who and how he was told to process the news have been revealed after the actor reunited with showrunner Russell T Davies.
The Scottish actor played The Doctor from 2005 until 2010, taking over from Christopher Eccleston as the tenth incarnation of the beloved sci-fi character.
Tennant would go on to become one of the most beloved versions of the character and even returned as the fourteenth Doctor for a short run between 2022 and 2023.
The Rivals star would work with Davies throughout his time on Doctor Who and the pair have since revealed that it didn’t take much for him to accept the role.
Davies appeared on the latest episode of David Tennant Does A Podcast With… where they discussed their first meeting about Doctor Who, which was an informal dinner party at Davies’ house, along with producer Julie Gardner.
Tennant said that during the evening they began to watch some old Doctor Who VHS tapes, which caused Gardner to spring the question: “would you ever be interested?”
Tennant quizzed Davies about “how stage-managed” the night was. “Oh, completely,” Davies admitted. “That was the night to find out if you’d be interested. That’s the only reason you came out.”
Davies added that he was “gutted” that Gardner had asked the question first but, regardless, it didn’t take Tennant long to reply. “There was a pause,” he explained. “And you said, ‘I want a coat down to there’. And I was like, ‘we got it’.”
Tennant recalled that Davies told him to “just go away and just think and be calm”.
“It’s a life-changing part,” said Davies. “I remember midway through your run, sitting in Cardiff Bay one day having a coffee, and I think it was a Saturday, and you ran through Cardiff Bay – you must have needed milk from the Tesco – with your baseball cap down. You were like a hunted ferret, and you scampered through keeping your head down. I thought, ‘I did that to him’.”
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Elsewhere, the BBC has confirmed that Doctor Who will return sooner than expected on 12 April, marking Ncuti Gatwa’s second season as the Time Lord.
The news had already been revealed in a surprise advert that aired during the BBC’s coverage of the U20s Six Nations Rugby match between England and Scotland on Friday (21 February).
The BBC has now confirmed that the season will launch on BBC iPlayer and internationally on Disney Plus at 8am on 12 April. The episode will air on BBC One later that day.
