David Tennant jealous of incoming Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa
Former Doctor Who star David Tennant says he’s “a little bit jealous” of the incoming Doctor Ncuti Gatwa “starting on this exciting journey.”
“Ncuti is brilliant,” adds Tennant, who played the Doctor between 2005-2010. “He’s a lovely, lovely man and he’s full of beans and he’s really talented. I mean he’s like scary-talented.
“So I’m thrilled for every Doctor Who fan for what’s to come and I include myself in that number.”
In May the BBC announced that Tennant himself would be reprising the role as part of the show’s 60th anniversary celebrations next year. Details are shrouded in secrecy but we know that he will be reunited with Catherine Tate, who played his companion Donna Noble.
And Tennant now tells the BBC how the reunion came about. “It all slightly happened a little bit by accident,” he reveals. And, strange as it may sound, Covid played a huge role.
He, Tate and Russell T Davies, who was in charge of the hit sci-fi series between 2005 and 2009, got involved in Doctor Who: Lockdown! a worldwide series of online “watch-alongs” of previous episodes designed to pass the time during the pandemic, “when everyone was locked in their house”.
“That’s where this all started”, explains Tennant.“At a certain time and day everyone would press play on a certain episode and some of the people who had been involved in those episodes were tweeting along.
“I don’t tweet but my wife helped me,” he laughs.
Afterwards the three of them “were just having a text exchange and Catherine said, ‘wouldn’t it be fun to do it again?'”
He adds: “Russell said, ‘We could do a one off, maybe they’d let us’.”
“We said, ‘yeah that would be a laugh,’ and then it all went quiet.”
But last year Davies announced he was back as Doctor Who’s showrunner. And Tennant and Tate received a surprising offer.
“Suddenly Russell let us know that he was taking over the show again and he would be back fully in charge and would we come and play a little bit for him?” says Tennant.
“So I don’t know if we gave him the idea to take Doctor Who back but certainly we thought if he’s doing it, we can’t let these young people have all the fun.”
