David Tennant embraces chance to be a villain
Beloved Doctor Who relishes ‘liberty of immorality’ as Kilgrave in Jessica Jones
David Tennant well knows the way of the geek. The Scottish actor, so widely recognized as the 10th Doctor by Doctor Who’s passionate fan base, looks upon the Hollywood proliferation of live-action comic-book adaptations and understands.
That’s because since boyhood, Tennant has been a fan of the form.
“I grew up with Marvel comics, so I absolutely got how enthusiastic people are for those characters and those properties,” Tennant said. “The last few years, as a viewer of the (Marvel) movies in particular and most recently with Daredevil, I’ve been thinking these are the movies and TV shows that I wished for when I was a kid.
“As I’ve watched the Marvel Cinematic Universe bloom and grow and take root over recent years, I’ve wondered if there might be some way I (could) show up in there,” Tennant continued. “So it was very exciting to get the call.”
That call offered Tennant the chance to join Marvel’s newest Netflix show, Jessica Jones (landing Friday), as an especially sinister character: the villainous Kilgrave.
“I hadn’t cast myself in any par- ticular role,” Tennant said, “but to get asked to play a nice, juicy villain is, I think, almost just as good as being asked to play one of the heroes.”
Tennant describes Kilgrave as a character who has an “extraordinary facility for compelling people to do whatever he likes.”
“What I liked about (Kilgrave was), he wasn’t a villain who was trying to take over the world,” Tennant said. “His goals are much more selfish. He’s just interested in himself.”
Jessica Jones will dive into the villain’s ability to dictate everything around him merely by the power of suggestion.
“If every person you met gave you everything you wanted unthinkingly, without any conflict, who is to say we wouldn’t all become a Kilgrave?” Tennant said. “There’s no argument to do anything else. And if you can’t . . . it’s almost really impossible to blame him for what he does, but perhaps I’m biased.”
As Jessica Jones aims to at least match the success of its Marvel/Netflix predecessor, Daredevil, Tennant believes in the nerd brains behind the show.
And he thinks the keys to Marvel/ Netflix’s success in their live-action collaboration is having producers who, with genuine comics backgrounds, provide knowing authenticity for diehard fans.
“Marvel (television shows) are rather brilliantly run by the people who used to make comic books,” Tennant said.
“Jeph Loeb is a comic-book writer. Joe Quesada is a comic-book artist and an editor. I think that’s the genius of what Marvel has done: the people in charge, they know how to make TV shows and they know how to make movies, but they also know that they have a real connection to those characters and properties. And they get what makes a good story and they also understand how to take the fans with them.”
One aspect of the “source material” that didn’t make it to Tennant’s role as Kilgrave is purple skin. In the comics, Kilgrave is referred to as “The Purple Man.”
“It was explained to me very early on that I was not going to be painted purple,” Tennant joked. “I think it was decided before I came on board that painting someone purple would perhaps be on the fantastical end of things, which is not the kind of world they’re trying to create in Jessica Jones.”
Having dodged extra time in the makeup chair, Tennant said his Kilgrave “look” would still consist of lots of purple clothes.
What really makes Kilgrave tick, though, is a singular obsession. A man who can have anything he wants is someone who can get bored pretty quickly. So if you’re someone who everyone always says yes to, what’s the one thing you have a chance of being obsessed with? The one person that got far enough away to say no. Enter Jessica Jones. “The one thing that he hasn’t been able to tame into his world, of course, is the one thing that he ultimately wants,” Tennant said. “(Kilgrave) is a man who has no weaknesses and he ends up creating one himself.”
As a past Doctor Who who received plenty of cheers from a fan base, Tennant said that being on the evil side of the story has advantages in terms of the type of performance he can give.
“There’s always something very tempting about the villains because they have the liberty of immorality,” Tennant said.
“They get to go to all the places that the hero can never go to. And there’s something rather appealing about that. And you get to go to places that, as human beings we, hopefully, don’t allow ourselves to go.
“If you get to indulge in that makebelieve world, it’s quite nice to have the liberty to have that freedom that villains are afforded.”