Despite being a fan of Doctor Who since childhood, David Tennant says he briefly considered not taking on the iconic role due to some questionable advice from a former agent.
On the most recent episode of David Tennant Does a Podcast with…the actor turned hosting duties over to his wife, Georgia Tennant, who recounted how executive producers Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner showed the Good Omens star footage from the first season of their 2005 Doctor Who revival starring Christopher Eccleston in the title role.
“And then they go, ‘Guess what? Do you want to play (the Doctor)?’ ” Georgia prompted. “And you pretend to think about it for like a day or something?”
“It was longer than that,” David, 53, said.
Billie Piper and David Tennant in ‘Doctor Who’ in 2006.
BBC/courtesy Everett Collection
Still, Georgia noted, he was “clearly” going to take the role.
“Well, maybe I was clearly going to do it,” David responded, “but there was definitely a moment where I wasn’t.”
“I had an agent at the time who was like, ‘Don’t touch it. It’s not going to work,’ ” he recalled. “Not my current agent. A previous brilliant agent who’s since retired, but she didn’t call that correctly.”
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David ultimately did accept Davies and Gardner’s offer, appearing as the Tenth Doctor for the first time in a June 2005 episode in which Eccleston’s version of the character regenerates into his new form.
The Broadchurch star continued to play the Doctor for three more seasons and several specials before handing the role off to Matt Smith in early 2010. Since then, he has returned to the role in a 2013 50th anniversary special and several audio plays. He also starred in three 2023 60th anniversary specials, though he was technically playing the Fourteenth Doctor, who just happened to look exactly like the Tenth.
Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt in ‘Doctor Who’ in 2013.
Adrian Rogers/BBC/courtesy Everett Collection
As Tennant confirmed on a recent episode of Fresh Airplaying the Doctor was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The actor recalled watching a 1974 episode of Doctor Who in which Jon Pertwee’s version of the character transformed into Tom Baker’s.
“So I was 3 years old. Maybe they repeated it like a year later, because sometimes they did that, so maybe I was 4,” Tennant said. “But I know that it was then, and I know that that led to a conversation with my parents.”
“It was a conversation where I learned what the difference between a character in a television program and an actor was,” he explained. “But in that moment, I understood what that concept was and decided that’s what I wanted to do. So despite how implausible it seems, I know that it’s true.”
Tennant said that from a young age, the character “fascinated” him.
“I just thought he was brilliant,” he recalled. “I just thought he was cool, he was clever. He was dressed in sort of brilliant, cool, mad clothes. But he looked like a normal human. And I think that was quite important to me as a fairly geeky young child. I didn’t imagine I could ever aspire to be Superman or the Incredible Hulk. You know, I was sort of quite weedy, and I wore glasses, and I had a terrible haircut. So all those things still felt possible in the world of The Doctor. There was something about that character that I could be.”
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