David Tennant talks to the Times about his new series Broadchurch and outlines his perfect weekend in an interview with the Times today
David Tennant talks about Broadchurch
The tenth Dr Who also has something to say about nappies,
boxed sets and why he’s really still a geek at heart
“Look at this!” says David Tennant ecstatically, waving a
slice of chocolate cake at me and insisting I have some too. “You don’t get
this at the BBC!”
It’s quite a shock to find him so transformed. I have just
been watching him playing granite-featured Detective Inspector Alec Hardy — a
man who can gaze at the corpse of a child without a flicker of emotion.
Tennant, in person a much cheerier soul, takes the lead inBroadchurch,
ITV’s answer to The Killing. The drama series follows the disintegration
of a close-knit seaside community after the mysterious death of a little boy.
Much of the tension stems from the friction between
Tennant’s enigmatic character and DS Ellie Miller, played brilliantly by Olivia
Colman, a dissolving marshmallow of pity as she attempts to cope with the
murder of her young son’s best friend. Needless to say, the ill-matched
colleagues don’t hit it off. But in real life, Colman says, Tennant is “the
nicest man in the world”.
“I’m very glad she says that,” says Tennant, blushing, when
I relay this to him. “Of course I’m not.” Well, perhaps there are a couple of
even nicer chaps out there, but it is remarkable that, even though he inhabits
the frequently bitchy world of showbiz, there seems to be no one who has a bad
word to say about him.
Despite his fame, he remains polite, chatty and
self-deprecating. “I was well brought-up,” he explains with a laugh. He’s also
universally hailed as a great actor, having carried off roles as diverse as
Casanova, Hamlet, Benedick, Barty Crouch Jr in Harry Potter, and, er,
harassed teacher Mr Peterson in Nativity 2 (yes, I’ve got small
children).
So it seems a bit of a shame that there is now only one role
with which he will forever be associated — although he clearly doesn’t mind
that enough to stop looking and dressing like the tenth Dr Who. Today, for
instance, in a meeting room at ITV, he is wearing a stripy T-shirt, clingy
tweed trousers, highly-polished tan brogues and spotty Paul Smith socks on his
bony ankles. His brown hair is sticking out in all directions, his eyes boggle
and he twitches with nervous energy. Frankly, he could have stepped straight
out of his Tardis. It’s just that he speaks in a Scottish accent rather than an
Estuary one.
It was as a little boy, watching Peter Davison playing the Time
Lord, that Tennant famously realised he wanted to do the same. After he landed
the part in 2005, he was quoted as saying he’d be the Doctor forever. Five
years later, he left. “Suddenly to be in a world where it feels like everyone
is staring at you takes a bit of getting used to. You have to keep questioning
whether it’s worth it. It’s not a bad thing — it’s a huge privilege — but it
also feels like a bit of a responsibility.”
Besides, he owed it to his childhood ambitions, he says, not
to lose his enthusiasm for the role. “I thought I should go out while I’d still
miss it, rather than stay on until the thought of squeezing myself into a tight
suit and running around and shouting and saving the world felt like a bit of a
drag. I wanted it to be a special thing I had this wonderful treat of being
asked to do.”
He’s kept some of Dr Who’s suits and, of course, his Sonic
Screwdriver. “It doesn’t do nearly as much as the toy ones you can buy. They
make their own noise. Mine just lights up and slides up and down.”
Tennant still watches the show and raves about Matt Smith’s
“mercurial madness”. But he is clearly glad to have moved on. The day after we
meet, he is due to start filming The Escape Artist, a legal thriller for
the BBC. Then, in August, he takes on Richard II in the RSC’s new production, a
role he has always longed to play. “He’s an incredible character who’s a total
t*** in some ways, but you end up feeling very sympathetic towards him,” he
explains.
Theatre, he says, is his “proper job” and filming is a
sabbatical — but he finds theatre terrifying, “to the point where, every time I
do a play, I say to myself, at the five minute call when there’s no going back:
‘Never do this again. This is stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! It would be
better to work in a shop. This is horrible!’
“I think every actor that goes on stage is a lot closer to
never being able to do it again than you might imagine,” he concludes. His
stage fright tends to wear off after the first few performances, “but you still
have some nights when your brain is telling you you’re about to forget the next
bit”.
He relaxes before going on stage by playing music and,
somewhat less appealingly, by farting. “It’s a breathing thing,” he explains.
“If you do lots of breathing exercises, you’re pushing down with your
diaphragm. It does feel like a release, I find, a good old fart before you do
anything.”
Otherwise, he eschews the good-luck rituals beloved of many
of his thespian comrades. “I’m rampantly anti-superstitious,” he says. “If I
find myself developing them, I’ll run from them.” I suspect this is down to his
upbringing: his father, Sandy McDonald, was a Church of Scotland minister, and
David grew up with his brother and sister in a manse in Paisley.
He was a swotty child. “I still am a geek,” he says
defiantly. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I see no shame in
having an unhealthy obsession with something. As a kid, it was Dr Who and
superheroes, then I became a record nerd.” He scoured the Paisley charity shops
looking for bolero jackets and paisley shirts so he could emulate his idol, Jim
Kerr of Simple Minds.
“I did get punched in the face once for being a weirdo,” he
admits.
At 17, he joined the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and
Drama. As there was already a David McDonald in Equity, he chose a stage name
in homage to Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. Didn’t the girls spot his
heart-throb potential? “God no. Never. Not at all. I had my first kiss around
the age of ten, but then there was a long drought. As soon as adolescence
arrived, I was frozen. I’ve never felt that was a side of life I was
particularly accomplished at,” he says.
This is rather odd, given that he has the reputation of
cutting a swath through his leading ladies. He dated Sophia Myles for several
years after they appeared together on Dr Who. Now Tennant is married to
Georgia Moffett — who is the daughter of the ex-Time Lord Peter Davison, and
who, to compound the weirdness, he met when she played his cloned daughter in a Dr
Who storyline in 2008.
The couple celebrated their marriage on New Year’s Eve,
2011, at the Globe Theatre in a glamorous knees-up attended by Stephen Fry,
Derren Brown, Sir Patrick Stewart and Gordon Brown. Tennant has adopted his
wife’s 11-year-old son, Ty, who is from a previous relationship, and they have
a daughter, Olive, who is nearly two. Now Moffett is pregnant with another
baby. Tennant is reluctant to discuss this, but says he’s looking forward to
its arrival. Does he change nappies? “Oh stop it,” he says. “Of course I change
nappies.”
The family live in West London and, when he’s not working,
Tennant enjoys hanging out at home. “I’ve got three boxed sets on the go at the
moment, which is bad practice because they drift,” he confesses. “I’m two
thirds of the way through Damages, season three, and I’m also watching the
American Office, season four. And I’ve got Game of Thrones. I watched
the first series of The Killing, which I enjoyed, though it probably
didn’t need to be 20 episodes long. I wish I had the time to read more books.”
He also enjoys cooking. “Jamie’s quite hard to beat because
it’s all very clear. I like to keep trying new recipes. At Christmas I got very
interested in an oxtail recipe and spent a long time refining it, using a finer
cut of beef but cooking it with oxtail for the sauce.” Otherwise, he doesn’t
really have any hobbies, he says. “I’d like to garden, but I don’t. My dad is
great at it, so if he’s down he does a lot of strolling up and down telling me
what to plant and tying up the tomatoes. I rely on his visits.
“I get less sociable as I get older,” he says, “and more
inclined to go into my bunker. It’s lovely to have people round but not leave
the womb. It’s too much hassle.”
Sounds like a Tardis might come in handy after all.
David Tennant’s perfect weekend
Theatre trip or crash
in front of the TV? Theatre trip
Slippers or loafers? Slippers
City or country? City
Bowie or Beethoven? Both
Michelin-starred food
or local pub? Michelin-starred food
Personal trainer or
Pilates? Personal trainer
Ski or sun? Sun
Novel or
autobiography? Autobiography
Soya skinny latté or
builders? Black coffee
E-mail or snail mail? E-mail
I can’t get through
the weekend without... Sleep
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