David Tennant And Matt Smith On The Two Doctors: "They're Slightly Competitive"

Earlier this year, Den Of Geek were lucky enough to be part of an interview session with David Tennant and Matt Smith on the set of Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor.

There has been a long tradition in Doctor Who of multi-Doctor shows and fans have always enjoyed the interactions between different facets of the Time Lord's personality. Once the big news broke that David Tennant and Billie Piper would be returning to play the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler in the 50th Anniversary special, one of the big questions was, of course, how would the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors interact.

“They're slightly competitive,” says David Tennant. “But I think they quite enjoy being in each other's presence as well.”

“They get on, and then they don't get on,” Matt Smith expands. “And then they get on. It's like two brothers who are evenly matched, fencing a lot...”

“... or a conversation with your own conscious,” David chips in “You swing from being quite pleased with yourself to being infuriated with your own inadequacies, so I guess that's kind of writ large!

“I think that's been quite interesting, to find the moments when our two Doctors intersect, and then when they do things rather differently. I think the fun is in the gap between the two. We've been finding joy in recognising the same thing, or having the same thought… And they switch between praising each other's ingenuity, to try to undermine each other at every possibility. They bicker a little, yes. But they quite like each other!...And then get surprised at how little they like each other!”

“There are moments, yeah. And I think our Doctors quite like each other. On occasion,” adds Matt “But they're sort of more evenly matched than buddy cops as well. But there's a bit of that. And also there's a great big alien plot in the middle of it.”

“And it slips in and out of the epic, effortlessly. So you have those brief, fun enjoyable moments, when they're bickering, or working together. And then it'll go somewhere much bigger, and grander and scarier,” says David.

To read what David and Matt had to say about David’s return, working with Billie Piper, Jenna Coleman and John Hurt, squeezable Zygons and life after Doctor Who visit the Den Of Geek website.