Comic Relief broadcasts on BBC One for Red Nose Day, with hosts David Tennant, Alesha Dixon, Paddy McGuinness, Davina McCall, and Sir Lenny Henry. Along with live sketches and other performances throughout the show, David also starred in a Staged special with Michael Sheen.
To help tackle issues such as homelessness, mental health stigma, domestic abuse, and COVID-19 related problems, consider donating to Comic Relief.
OnThe Late, Late Show with James Corden, David discusses the process of making Staged with his wife, Georgia, the pains of homeschooling, and he comes clean about his fake personal assistant, Melissa von Stressel.
“Nick comes to the read-through with his ring modulator. And he sets up a little speaker and he sits there, and he patiently waits for the first Dalek line to come around, knowing that when it does and when it first booms across that read-through room he’s going to get a shiver of delight from everyone in the room.” - David Tennant, Doctor Who Confidential “Friends and Foe”
↳Hair:Whether his hair is wet or dry, blowing in the wind or lying flat, freshly ruffled or perfectly styled, sticky-uppy or permed, wavy and weird from the leftover growing out perm or even in a long plait you can’t deny that he has really great hair.
Behind the Scenes of The Day of the Doctor (part 6)
Excerpts from Benjamin Cook’s interview with David Tennant and Matt Smith from DWM #467
DWM: You have sort of acted together once before, for the regeneration [The End of Time, 2010]…
Matt: Sort of together.
David: But sort of very much nottogether.
Matt: That was a weird day - for both of us, I think.
DWM: David, you’ve told us in the past that the difficult thing about filming a regeneration is that there’s no established etiquette.
David: No, there isn’t.
DWM: Four years on, I wonder if you can both look back on that day more objectively?
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 was 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 around the monitors.”
Matt: I know, I know.
David: It was very high-pressure.
Matt: And there were lots of explosions, which was good, but that was a new thing - all the debris and bang, bang, bang, was a completely new experience for me - “
David: You get very blase to that all very quickly, don’t you?
Matt: Well, it does the acting for you. You don’t want it to upstage you.
David: My experience on that 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 would have found it really tough.
Matt: What was your last scene?
David: Oh, silly little greenscreen things a few days later. Exactly as it is on this episode.
Matt: Oh man, really?
David: It’s always the way - at the end of the schedules, the weird bits of greenscreen.
Matt: Of course.
David: Falling through the vortex.
Matt: Then they’re like, ‘Can you move your hand in? And out again? And… that’s a wrap!’
David: That was it. Exactly it. It was weird, the regeneration, because it felt sort of momentous and big, personally and professionally, and then Matt came on and we had a couple of photographs…
Matt: I know, I’m looking really nervous! And they’re up in my mum and dad’s house, and my granddad’s.
David: Aww
Matt: I’m like, ‘Can you take the really bad photo of me down?’ I’m like this, and you’re sort of looking at me, David, going, ‘You poor bastard.’
David: [Laughs] 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’re aware of how dispensable you are - but also that you’ve filmed something quite historic, and that’s exciting to be a part of, as this is.
