David Tennant


*The following article is written from an Out of Universe perspective.*

David Tennant (born 18 April 1971 as David John McDonald) played Will Adams, one of the leads in the Doctor Who spin-off series Panopticon. He also appeared in Doctor Who: Vengeance, Doctor Who: Endgame and the Doctor Who TV episode, Inquisition.

Biography

Prior to Doctor Who

David grew up in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father was the local minister, and later Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. At the age of three, David told his parents that he wanted to become an actor, largely because of his early enjoyment of Doctor Who. Although such an aspiration might have been common for a Scottish child of the 1970s, Tennant says he was "absurdly single-minded" in pursuing his goal. He adopted the professional name "Tennant" — inspired by Neil Tennant, the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys — because the actors' union Equity already had a David McDonald on their books.

Moving to London in the early 1990s, Tennant lodged with comic actress and writer Arabella Weir, with whom he became close friends and later godfather to one of her children. He appeared as a guest in her spoof television series Posh Nosh. Tennant began his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal ShakespeareCompany for which he specialised in comic roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors and Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals, although he also played the tragic role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

He has appeared in several high-profile dramas for the BBC, including Takin' Over the Asylum, (1994) a six-part BBC Scotland serial in which he played a manic depressive named Campbell, He Knew He Was Right (2004), Blackpool (2004), Casanova (2005) and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). In film, he has appeared in Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things, and as Barty Crouch Jr in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Michael Gambon. One of his earliest big screen roles was in Jude (1996), in which he shared a scene with his Panopticon co-star Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect.

In January 2006, Tennant played Richard Hoggart in a dramatisation of the 1960 Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial. Written by Andrew Davies and directed by Doctor Who's James Hawes for digital television channel BBC Four, Hoggart's son Simon Hoggart praised Tennant's portrayal in the drama in The Guardian newspaper. "[E]xtremely convincing — the suit, the hair, the Yorkshire accent, and trickiest of all, the speech rhythms. The only thing wrong is his sideburns. Tennant explained, the sideburns wouldn't grow back in a day."

Also in January 2006, readers of the British gay and lesbian newspaper The Pink Paper voted Tennant the "Sexiest Man in the Universe" over David Beckham and Brad Pitt.

Work on Doctor Who

David Tennant was chosen to play the role of Will Adams in Panopticon

Tennant began filming the first series of Panopticon in late May 2007. His first full-length outing as Will Adams was in the first Panopticon episode Period of Adjustment , which was broadcast on 9 February 2008.

Tennant is a long-time fan of the Doctor Who franchise and has exhibited extensive knowledge of its history and trivia in interviews, podcasts and DVD commentaries. In March 2009 he gave a demonstration of his knowledge of the franchise during a mock edition of Mastermind for the BBC's Comic Relief Red Nose Day telethon. He has often expressed enthusiasm about fulfilling his childhood dream. He remarked to an interviewer for GWR FM, "Who wouldn't want to be in Doctor Who? I've even got my own TARDIS!" He recorded a special "Easter egg" commentary for the Remastered release of The Five Doctors included on the Season 20 boxset.

Tennant continued to play Will throughout Panopticcon's run, and along with Emma Caulfield played Connie in the last few episodes of the series aired in 2013.

He also made brief cameos as Will Adams in the Doctor Who episode Inquisition and the movies Doctor Who: Vengeance and Doctor Who: Endgame.

Tennant also appeared as Will in the Cold Front episode Aftermath.

After Doctor Who

In January 2015 he won a Special Recognition Award at the NTAs. Between February and August, he was in New York shooting the lead role of villain Kilgrave/The Purple Man on the Marvel/Netflix TV series Jessica Jones. During this time, he appeared at two American fan conventions, at Wizard World Raleigh in North Carolina in March, and with Billie Piper at Philadelphia Comic Con in May. In April he attended the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC, his wife Georgia Moffett travelling from England to accompany him to the prestigious event. In August, the day after his return from New York, he travelled to Cardiff for several days where he visited the Doctor Who set with Russell T Davies. He spent much of November in New York, doing a promotional tour for Jessica Jones.

In December 2015 he attended Comic Con Brazil in São Paulo.

In January 2016 Tennant reprised his role in Richard II for the RSC's 'King and Country' season (all four history plays performed together) at the Barbican. In February 2016 he shot 'Mad to be Normal', a feature film biopic about RD Laing, in York.

In March and April, Richard II transferred to New York. During this time he attended Wizard World convention in St Louis, alongside Billie Piper. He also presented a BBC special marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. In May he began shooting Broadchurch series 3 in Dorset.

Between March and June 2017, Tennant appeared in Patrick Marber's Don Juan in Soho at the Wyndham's Theatre. Also in 2017, he took over as the voice of Scrooge McDuck for Disney XD's DuckTales reboot, replacing the character's longtime voice actor Alan Young, who died in May 2016. In addition to this, Tennant voiced the character of Buck Douglas in the 2017 Fireman Samspecial, Fireman Sam: Alien Alert.

In 2018, Tennant was announced as playing the principal role in Good Omens, a TV series based on the original novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, opposite Michael Sheen.

In 2019, he began hosting his own podcast series, David Tennant Does a Podcast With.... His first guest was Samantha Bond. Other guests include Olivia Colman, Ian McKellen and Good Omens co-star Michael Sheen.

Personal Life

Tennant is a supporter of the Labour Party and appeared in a party political broadcast for them in 2005. He declared his support for then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2010, and labelled David Cameron a "terrifying prospect". In April 2010, he lent his voice to a Labour election broadcast. In 2012, he introduced Labour Party leader Ed Miliband onstage at the Labour Party Conference. In 2015, he also lent his voice to a Labour Party General Election broadcast.