David Tennant: ‘Kissing Michael Sheen was fine. He’d brushed his teeth’
How do you face the challenge of being this year’s Bafta host? practicalpanicI don’t currently feel particularly challenged because everything’s written down for me and I don’t have to worry about winning – or not winning – an award. If it was the first night of a play, I’d be curled up in a corner in the foetal position. But the fact that it’s not my day job certainly feels liberating. Who knows why they asked me; I must have been pretty far down the list. Expectations are pretty much zero. I don’t have anything to prove. Will I be phoning [previous Bafa hosts] Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry for advice? I might do. But I’m travelling in blissful ignorance at the moment.
What’s your sideburn policy? They appear to be sized in direct proportion to your characters’ confidence. DrHugbineThat’s a very interesting observation, which I don’t think has any truth behind it, but it’s making me wonder …
Here are some examples … Fright Night’s Peter Vincent – long and bushy, confident vampire killer. The Doctor in Doctor Who – long and pointy, charismatic and charming. Broadchurch’s DI Alec Hardy – beard, no sideburns, introverted and suspicious. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’s Barty Crouch Jr – no beard, no sideburns, complex and a traitor. Good Omens’ Anthony Crowley – ginger, no sideburns, stylish but tempted Eve in the garden of Eden as a snake so a bit of a bad egg generally. TopTrampI don’t think you’re going to write a doctoral thesis based on that evidence. It’s very thin evidence, at most. I grew sideburns for Doctor Who because, back then, I was worried I was a bit young for it and I thought they slightly aged me. Which, of course, I then had to recreate recently when I’m almost certainly too old for it. I guess increasingly I am unshaven, in which case you don’t really have to worry about sideburns because they’re part of something else. Whatever length my sideburns are on the night of the Baftas has no reflection on how I’m treating the Baftas.
As a vicar with young kids, I wondered what influence being a son of the manse has had upon your work? RevdAlIt’s hard to know, because you only know the influences you had specifically from your parents because they’re your parents – it’s hard to unpick. It certainly wasn’t a childhood filled with religious dogma or any kind of restrictions. It was more a moral guidebook.
What was it like kissing Michael Sheen [in season two of Good Omens]? And who enjoyed it more? carnies18Who enjoyed it the most? Presumably Michael was thrilled. How could he not be? But it was another day at work. The most difficult bit was other people’s awkwardness. We thought it was quite fun, so it was fine.
He’d brushed his teeth.
Would you accept a knighthood just to fuel an excellent argument with Sheen in the next series of Staged? ShirlsBecause he sent his OBE back? That predisposes the fact that anything that’s talked about in Staged is based on real life. We in our own houses, acting opposite people we spend our life with. But that’s pretty much the extent of the reality of Staged.
Which is best – playing a detective, a murderer or a murder victim? JonnyMorris1973Well, one of them solves the crimes. One of them commits the crimes. And the other one has a crime done to them. It probably depends which character the writer is most fond of and therefore the most fun to play. It’s not really in the gift of the actor, so much as in the gift of the scriptwriter. I think I’ve only played one detective, haven’t I? What’s my favourite way I’ve been murdered? Oh my goodness. I was shot in The Last September. I get murdered on stage every night in Macbeth, although that’s a spoiler. I sort of died in Doctor Who when I got shot by a galvanic beam in a radiation chamber that filled my body with more radiation I could cope with.
Am I as geeky as the Doctor who fans? Yes. As a Doctor Who fan myself of old, I can very much can plug into that. I don’t think I ever got in trouble at school. That is one of those stories that’s ended up on Wikipedia. I wrote an essay on Doctor Who, which some unpleasant newspaper found and printed. But I didn’t get in trouble for it. I think I got quite a good mark for it.
Who would win in a fight between Crowley, The Doctor and Scrooge McDuck? AlistairDionysusProbably Scrooge McDuck. He seems to be able to survive just about everything. He’s far more resilient than Crowley or The Doctor, who seem to end up staring destruction in the face. Scrooge McDuck, nothing seems to trouble him.
You have a lovely singing voice! Would you like to do a musical? Beatrice_Tate, gaityr, laibarra622 and LuigiiI make a nice curry, but I’m not going to open a restaurant. Would I do the Masked Singer? I love The Masked Singer. Nothing has excited my eightyear-old daughter more than when everyone thought Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs was me, week after week. You can imagine how disappointed she was when it turned out I wasn’t.
If you were a cheese, what kind would you be? BrianBraddockI’ve got very into paneer curries. Paneer is neither hard nor soft, so I’ll say that because it makes me sound like I’ve really thought about it.
What’s the last item you snatched from a set?NataliaBCNI’m just going back through things I might have pocketed. Maybe this is the upbringing we talked of earlier. I’m very bad with nicking things. I’m plagued with guilt. The last time they released a new sonic screwdriver toy, someone gave me one but I gave it away because I’m so full of generosity, but now I slightly regret it.
Your portrayal of serial killer Dennis Nilsen [in ITV’s Des] was truly terrifying. How do you prepare for a role like that? YorkshireExPatWith someone such as Dennis Nilsen, there is quite a lot of material that’s been written about him. There’s video evidence of him. So you immerse yourself as much you can, then join a line between that and the version of the character that’s in the script, because, ultimately, that’s the version you have to portray. One thing we were very careful to do on Des was to not make it from his point of view. I don’t think you can ask an audience to sympathise or understand someone like Nilsen. It’s the story of how he got away with all these things, then was caught. Hopefully the audience is left thinking: how can someone who is just another member of the human race be committing these extraordinary acts and the rest of us not notice or understand?
If you could regenerate as anyone else for the day, who would you choose? TopTrampMy wife, just to see how annoying I really am so I could be properly objective and understand her pain.
• The EE Bafta film awards take place on 18 February at the Royal Festival Hall, London, and will be shown on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and BritBox International