David Tennant

David Tennant

Early life[]

Tennant attended the Ralston Primary andPaisley Grammar School in Scotland. He also attended Saturday classes at theRoyal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Career[]

Tennant made his professional acting debut while still in secondary school. At 16 he acted in an anti-smoking film made by the Glasgow Health Board which aired on television and was also screened in schools. The following year, 1988, he had his first TV role, playing Neil McDonald in an episode of Dramarama.

Tennant's first professional role upon graduating from drama school was in a staging ofThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui co-starring Ashley Jensen, one of a few plays in which he performed as part of the agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company. He also made an early television appearance in 1994 in the Scottish TV sitcomRab C. Nesbitt as a transgender (MtF) barmaid called Davina.

Tennant's first major TV part was as the manic depressive Campbell in the Scottish drama seriesTakin' Over the Asylum (1994). During filming, Tennant met comic actress and writer Arabella Weir. When he moved to London shortly afterwards he lodged with Weir for five years and became godfather to her youngest child. He has subsequently appeared alongside Weir in many productions; as a guest in her spoof television series,Posh Nosh; in theDoctor Who audio dramaExile- during which Weir played an alternate version of the Doctor- and as panellists on theWest Wing Ultimate Quiz on More4.

From 1996, Tennant developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company for whom he specialised in comic roles such as Touchstone inAs You Like It, Antipholus of Syracuse inThe Comedy of Errors (a role he recorded for the 1998 Arkangel Complete Shakespeare production of the play) and Captain Jack Absolute inThe Rivals. Albeit he also played the tragic role of Romeo inRomeo and Juliet,showing his versatility as a professional actor.

In 2000, Tennant appeared at the Royal National Theatre, London, playing the role of Nicholas Beckett in Joe Orton'sWhat the Butler Saw. The plot required Tennant to appear near-naked on stage.

Tennant appeared in several high-profile dramas for the BBC, including Takin' Over the Asylum (1994), He Knew He Was Right (2004), Blackpool (2004), Casanova (2005) and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). In film, he has appeared in Stephen Fry'sBright Young Things, and as Barty Crouch Jnr inHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. One of his earliest big screen roles was inJude (1996), in which he shared a scene with his Doctor Who predecessor Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect.

In 2005, soon after his appearance inGoblet of Fire, Tennant was signed to take over as theTenth Doctor onDoctor Who after Christopher Eccleston (theNinth Doctor) chose to leave after a single season, and he has been identified byDoctor Who Magazine and other media as one of the most popular actors to play the iconic SF character. In October 2008, he announced that he would be stepping down as the Doctor after appearing in four special episodes scheduled to air by the end of 2009. Matt Smith, at the time a relative unknown, succeeded him as the Eleventh Doctor, but Tennant was then confirmed to be reprising his role as the Tenth Doctor alongside Smith and John Hurt in theDoctor Who 50th Anniversary special,Day of the Doctor, in November 2013.^[4] Since then, he has regularly reprised his role as the Doctor, occasionally alongside previousWho actors, during the live show,The Muppets Take The O2, and more recently for the British audio production company Big Finish, in several audio dramas. In 2022, he returned toDoctor Who as theFourteenth Doctor, who appears identical to the Tenth Doctor albeit slightly older, for three 2023 specials to mark the 60th anniversary ofDoctor Who. This made him the first actor to play two official incarnations of the Doctor.

In 2008, coinciding with his announcement regardingDoctor Who, Tennant performed inHamlet the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. His co-star wasPatrick Stewart ofStar Trek fame. Aback injury forced Tennant to undergo surgery towards the end of 2008, but he recovered in time to complete his run onHamlet and film his finalDoctor Who episodes as the Tenth Doctor.

Since completing his final scenes in his initial run ofDoctor Who, Tennant has filmed his performance ofHamlet for eventual TV broadcast, and is reportedly being considered for a number of high-profile movie roles. He is also scheduled to hostMasterpiece Contemporary, a new version ofMasterpiece Theatre, for the American PBS network in the fall of 2009.^[5]

Tennant performed alongsideDoctor Who co-star Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) inMuch Ado About Nothing between May 2011 and September 2011.

He also did voice work oppositeImelda Staunton again playing a protagonist in the Aardman filmThe Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!. Her voicing Queen Victoria and him voicing Charles Darwin.

From 2013 to 2017 Tennant starred as Detective Inspector Alec Hardy on the widely popular BBC seriesBroadchurch. He is also the voice of the latest incarnation of the Fugitoid in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and of inventor Tycho Reeves inThunderbirds Are Go!, the 2015 CGI reboot of Gerry Anderson's cult Sci-Fi franchise,Thunderbirds.

In 2013, the miniseriesThe Politician's Husband aired, in which Tennant starred as power-hungry politician and husband Aiden Hoynes.

Since 2015, Tennant has portrayed Kilgrave in the Netflix original series, Jessica Jones. He has also reprised his role as the Tenth Doctor for a series ofDoctor Who audio adventures released by Big Finish Productions.

From 2017 to 2021, he has starred in a Disney reboot ofDuckTales as Scrooge McDuck, airing on both Disney XD and Disney Channel, which ended on 15 March 2021. During this, he reunited with Tate once again (the latter in a minor role as recurring villain Magica De Spell).

In 2019, he voiced Dr Rufus Weller and Caliban, an AI assistant with an early copy of Well's mind, in the Rooster Teeth seriesgen:LOCK. Tennant also voiced the robot E92 in the English dub of the Netflix anime seriesEden in 2021.

Tennant reprised his role as the Doctor in the 2023 specials forDoctor Who as the show was celebrating 60 years although he portrayed the character's fourteenth incarnation rather than the tenth.

Behind the scenes[]

• Coincidentally, the last chapter that Tennant's Crouch Jnr appears inThe Goblet of Fire is called "The Parting of the Ways" - as is theDoctor Who revival Series 1 finale where Eccleston's Ninth Doctor regenerates into Tennant's Tenth Doctor. The amount of time the characters appear in is also very similar, as Crouch Jnr appears for just the first page of the chapter, while the Tenth Doctor appears in the final scene of the episode.
• Tennant's first true solo appearance as theTenth Doctor occurred ina (canonical) mini-episode entitledBorn Again in some circles, set immediately after his regeneration and produced for the 2005 Children in Need Appeal. This episode was first broadcast on 18 November 2005 — the same dayHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released in cinemas.
• Tennant andFreema Agyeman (companionMartha Jones) mentionExpelliarmus,J. K. Rowling andthe seventh Harry Potter book in theDoctor Who episodeThe Shakespeare Code.
• During the two-partDoctor Who storyRise of the Cybermen /The Age of Steel, he appears along withRoger Lloyd-Pack - who inGoblet of Fire, appeared asBarty Crouch Snr. Ironically, their roles fromGoblet of Fire are reversed in the episode, as Lloyd-Pack is a hero inGoblet of Fire but a villain inDoctor Who while Tennant is aGoblet of Fire villain but the hero inDoctor Who.

Trivia[]

• In 2013, IGN ranked Tennant as the best Doctor,^[6] along with theDaily Mail^[7] andRadio Times.
• Tennant's wife Georgia (née Moffett) is the daughter ofFifth DoctorPeter Davison. David worked with Davison inDoctor Who's 2007 Children in Need specialTime Crash and with Georgia in theDoctor Who episodeThe Doctor's Daughter.
• Tennant,David Bradley, andJohn Hurt, have all appeared as the Doctor inDoctor Who (with Hurt and Tennant appearing directly alongside each other) - though Tennant is the only actor in theHarry Potter franchise to have also played an official incarnation of the Doctor in a regular capacity.
  • Michael Gambon,Roger Lloyd-Pack,Timothy Bateson andAdrian Rawlins have also appeared in the same show, Rawlins, who reprised his role as James Potter inGoblet of Fire, would appear alongside Tennant in the episodePlanet of the Ood, an episode that featured a species made to work much like thehouse-elves within theHarry Potter franchise.
• Tennant and Bradley also appeared together in the ITV murder seriesBroadchurch.
• Tennant,Jim Broadbent andRupert Grint voiced characters inPostman Pat: The Movie.

External links[]

The Harry Potter Wiki has 2 images related toDavid Tennant.

• David Tennant at theInternet Movie Database
• David Tennant onWikipedia
• David Tennant at the TARDIS Data Core (Doctor Who wiki)

Notes and references[]