INTERVIEW: David Tennant & Matt Smith Talk Regenerations, Tarzan And Hair



David Tennant and Matt Smith have taken part in a joint conversational interview for this month's Doctor Who Magazine and in it they talk about how they both felt whilst recording David's regeneration scene...

Matt: "I just sort of stumbled through it, and was grateful and thankful when it was over. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that? Also, I'd been for two auditions, had like three or four months hanging around, and then they were like, 'Can you come in, in like two weeks, please?'"

David: "Here's a page of dialogue"

Matt: "Yeah, and suddenly you're doing it and then... I mean, I'm going to have to go through it as well soon, but I can't imagine what it's like to see some young whippersnapper turn up in your suit".

David: "It is quite peculiar. But that day was very different to my first day (The Parting Of The Ways, 2005). I had the advantage of sort of being slipped in under the cover of darkness, with a skeleton crew, no other actors, Chris Eccleston's half of the scene had already been filmed. I was just being dropped in a few weeks before it was transmitted. Whereas when you did it, Matt, most of the BBC seemed to have come down from London and was standing round the monitors. It was very high pressure."

David: "My experience of the day was...it was very mixed, because it was quite emotional just filming that last moment. It wasn't my last day. Had it been my last day as well..."

Matt: "Horrendous"

David: "I think I'd have found it really tough"

David: "Then I just wandered off and got in a car. That was the really weird bit. As you wander off you hear them going 'Right, okay, let's block the next scene', and suddenly you are aware of how dispensable you are - but also that you've filmed something quite historic, and that's exciting to be part of, as is this.."

The conversation also touched upon David's hairstyle in The Day Of The Doctor, a subject that seems to be popular with some members of the fanbase. So are we to read anything in to the fact that his hair isn't quite as bouncy / spiky or generally va va voom as it was in some previous episodes..

David: "Nothing. No. Well we're mixing it up. Otherwise it's business as usual. This isn't the sort of part where you can change your look all that often. You have a different tie now and again."

Matt: "That's a different tie?"

David: "It's a slightly different tie, although very much from the same palette (laughs). The shirt's quite different."

Matt: "Is it?"

David: "No."

How do they feel about their performances as the Doctor being compared to past actors portrayals?

David: "The Doctor isn't the same each time, so you're expected to kind of do it a bit different to the guy who did it last. It's not quite like Hamlet, or Tarzan, or James Bond, where the characters are sort of..."

Matt: "I find Tarzan a remarkable character. Sorry, to interrupt. Carry on."

David: (Laughs) "But those characters are the characters, whereas the Doctor is a bit of a blank sheet each time. So I suppose you're compared by people who like to make lists of their favourites and things like that, but that's not really being compared against someone else as an actor, that's people having preferences, isn't it? Which is a slightly different thing."

Matt: "I just really want to see a whimsical Tarzan now.."

You can read the full interview in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine which is out now priced at £7.99





Comments