Dr Who’s biggest foe... not Daleks but the BBC
FORMER Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston has launched a blistering attack on the BBC over the circumstances which caused him to quit the show after just one series.
The outspoken actor chose his appearance at a Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles to break a long silence on his sharp exit from the Tardis in 2005.
He told fans: “A lot of **** went down because of the BBC. The politics on the show were horrendous.”
“It went wrong pretty quickly. My relationship with Russell T Davies and the other producers fell apart during recording of the first block of episodes.”
The 56-year-old star said meeting adoring fans at conventions like this one in California was cathartic. “I’ve felt a huge amount of love. It’s helped me get over the BBC ******** , like the BBC inventing a quote on my behalf.” He was believed to be referring to a statement saying he left the show because of fears of being typecast which the BBC later admitted was falsely attributed and released without his permission.
The actor’s Los Angeles address to the fans was full of praise for co-star Billie Piper, saying: “Billie was terrified at first but she turned out to be the best actor on Doctorwho.”
He was less forthcoming about another of his castmates, John Barrowman, saying of him: “No comment.we’ll move swiftly on.”
Christopher admitted his approach did not gel with some of the upper management in the BBC’S Doctorwho team.
“I know I wasn’t first choice for the role. Hugh Grant turned it down and
Bill Nighy turned it down. At the first script read-through we all had to introduce ourselves. I said, ‘Hello, I’m Bill Nighy and I’m playing the Doctor.’ It didn’t go down well. A BBC executive was seen to leave the room.” Christopher said he always had faith in the revived show being the big hit it turned out to be but that faith was not always shared in the executive corridors of the corporation. He said: “The BBC don’t really know if anything’s good until it’s good but I had confidence because I’d worked with Russell T Davies before on The Second Coming and I’ve based my entire TV career on working with strong writers.”
He said one of his proudest achievements was using his own Salford accent to play the Time Lord. When Billie Piper’s character Rose Tyler asks his alien character in one episode why he sounds like a northerner, his Doctor replies: “Every planet has a north.”
The star continued: “I couldn’t relate to the other Doctors because they all sounded like BBC newsreaders. And, previously, the Doctor had always been more foppish and bohemian. If you grow up in Britain you cannot escape the disease of class, the idea that working-class people can never be intellectual or have a poetic sensibility.”
But some things are changing and he is thrilled that the Tardis is now occupied by Jodie Whittaker, a woman and a fellow northerner. “My son Albert and daughter Esme are growing up in a world where the Doctor can be a woman and that’s great,” he said.