Quite a fitting name for the panel, considering everything there is in French!
So before the panel there was a cute introduction video, and this guy played the I Am The Doctor, and then an orchestra (OVMF, if you care) played a couple more Doctor Who tunes, and after a very long time of waiting and some bad puns from the moderators (seriously), we finally got to the reason we all came there.
Alex was the first to come onstage. Then Freema came, and last came David. He raised his arms (photo, thanks to the folks at DavidTennantOnTwitter), like he always does when he comes onstage in conventions, and stood there as we all cheered. Then he went to the couch, sat down next to Freema, leaned against her, raised his legs and lay down with his head against her! We all burst out laughing. He was all grinning, and it was really adorable.
Then he sat up and they started the panel. At first the moderators asked a couple of questions, just to ‘get the usual ones out of the way’, and then finally they started answering the audience’s questions.
First thing the moderators asked was who’s their favourite Doctor. Alex said all of them, because they’re all the same man – the Doctor. David sort of nodded along to that. When his turn came, he said he’s legally obliged to say the Fifth Doctor. Guess we all know why 😉
Since Freema and David were sitting on the same couch, when Freema’s turn came, David leaned towards her, grinning and all and went, ‘Yes, Freema, who’s your favourite Doctor?’ Which made us (and them) laugh. Freema said that of course Ten is her favourite.
The next question was what their favourite episode is. David said what he always does: he doesn’t have a favourite episode, he likes them all the same. He said, “It does feel a bit like choosing between your children and you can’t do that.” (His tone was a bit ‘believe me on that’/parenting advice, which made it extremely funny.) Freema and Alex both agreed with him they can’t choose favourites. Freema said she really loved The Shakespeare Code, because it was fun to make, and Alex said she loved Vincent and the Doctor, because of the storyline and how the Doctor brings Van Gogh to the future in the end to show him his importance.
Next question from the moderators: who their favourite villain is. They kept gesturing towards the Daleks on the stage, hinting them to pick the Daleks, at which point Alex just said, “Well, I killed one of these, so…” She then proceeded to say that ‘My favourite villain was… I forgot. Wait… No, I forgot.’ Which, of course, means the Silence (which she later said in French)!
David said he loves the Daleks. He said unlike most monsters, the Daleks are fully built – what we see onscreen is what they see when they’re filming, and they hear Nicholas Briggs’ voice saying the Daleks’ lines through their earpiece. He said it’s very different to acting in front of a green screen or opposite a man with ‘falling bits of foam and prosthetics’. He also said he loved the Master (as played by John Simm).
David’s mention of the prosthetics got Freema and Alex to talk about the men behind the monsters. Alex said it would be interesting to have them (there were two – Paul, who was there on David’s time, and Rory, who took over afterwards) in a convention, talking about the work they do. They both spoke about how amazing they were, wearing their costumes and prosthetics for long hours, growing really hot, doing a lot of hard work but never complaining. You could hear the amazement in their voices.
Last question from the moderators was whether they’ve tasted poutine (which consists of french fries, gravy and cheese curds), a dish that’s apparently coming from Montreal or something. That led to David exclaiming, ‘Why didn’t anybody bring us that?!’ and talking about the word ‘curds’ (he’s such a kid sometimes) and how awful it sounds. Then some kid from the audience called out, “It’s delicious!” and David said, “I know!” The look on his face and the tone of his voice were so funny! He added later, “It’s delicious, but it’s not a nice word.”
Then, finally, the moderators let people ask questions. (I think they thought they were funny… they weren’t. But David, Freema and Alex made even their ramblings fun.)
The first person was a woman who asked about Will in The Escape Artist. She asked David whether he played him as a protagonist or an antagonist. He was at loss for words at first, then managed to ask, “You an English teacher?”
He then thought a bit and said he didn’t think about it, and it’s not something you do when you’re playing a character, that’s for the people viewing the show to decide. “You don’t go through life thinking ‘I’m an antagonist’,” He explained.
The moderators then directed the question to Freema and Alex as well, whether they’ve ever approached a character as a protagonist or antagonist. Alex said you never make that sort of choices when you play a character – it only limits you when you make decisions as to how to play it. She spoke about the production of McBeth she did, and said that they decided to approach them as people, looking at the mistakes they’ve made and how they paid for it, and the intention was that in the end, the audience will end up thinking about what they’d have done in their place; to see them as humans, not villains. “We’re all humans and we all make mistakes, we all have faults,” She explained. “You’re just human.”
The next question was about Einstein and Eddington. The guy asked what David thinks about Einstein, to which David (who was slightly baffled by the question) said, “We’ve an English teacher and a physics teacher”. David didn’t really know what to say to that – he stuttered a moment or two, making everyone laugh, and then said that he thinks there needs to be a Doctor Who episode where the Doctor meets Einstein (which was received with cheering). David said he didn’t specifically study Einstein as he didn’t play him (his part was Eddington), and talked a bit about the film, the history of Einstein and Eddington and Eddington’s work to prove Einstein’s theories (“At a Time in Britain when German scientists were not flavour of the month”).
The second part of the guy’s question was asking David how he stays motivated as an actor. David said that acting can be miserable when it’s not going well, but you chase the highs. He said he’s been lucky to get some great opportunities. “In terms of your own psychology, I say, talk it out. Talk it out to yourself… Talk to yourself if that helps. You don’t get a lot of great advice back, necessarily…”
The moderators once again asked Freema and Alex to answer the same question. Freema spoke about the percentages and how small the odds are to make a living as an actor, and said she wasn’t planning to become an actress, but she did a play when she was a teenager and ‘something just clicked’. She said acting allows you to learn about people, to grow, to learn about yourself and lose your own inhibitions and to make other people feel something and connect to the story and the characters you’re presenting. She said you just need to have something else to focus on, because if you just keep staring at the phone waiting for the call, it feels like it’s not going anywhere. You gotta keep busy.
Alex said that she started young, so she had this naivety young people often have, not thinking there’s a possibility their dream won’t come true. She also said she didn’t dream big – she’d have been fine just doing regional theatre (during her panel she said she dreamed about working for the Royal Shakespeare Company – that was her goal as an actress). She said she knew a lot of people who started out acting but gave up because at some point they realised they were unhappy, and that’s the point, really, to find something that makes you happy – facing the truth and accepting it if something isn’t working, and finding something else to do that makes you happy.
The next question was whether Freema and Alex watched Jessica Jones (to which Alex immediately replied, “Why would we see Jessica Jones?” Which had us laughing). The guy then asked how David decided to play Kilgrave. David looked at him and went, “How I decidedto play Kilgrave? These questions are hard!”
At this point Alex cut him off and said, “He’s really like that! You think he’s nice, he’s an absolute lunatic, maniac!”
David tried to understand what exactly he means, and the guy explained he was asking how he’d made Kilgrave into such a creepy character. David said that he thinks that if you had the ability to make everyone do that you want, it would corrupt you. “You know, ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, goes the phrase,” He said. Kilgrave isn’t an antagonist on purpose – he just expect things to go his way, and the thing about Jessica is that she can resist him, and the moment she does, he has to have her, because everything else he can have without a problem. “The only thing he really wants is the thing he can’t have. So you just sort of extrapolate from that. It’s just… I don’t know, you just read the script and do it!”
One of the moderators then asked if he finds it good to approach a character as a villain or as if the character doesn’t know, and David immediately said, “Nobody knows they’re villain. Donald Trump thinks he’s a great guy!” (To a lot of cheering)
“Doctor Who fans are never gonna be for Donald Trump!” He said, “The two fandoms are mutually exclusive.” (To which a moderator said, “Both should be fictional”, which is kinda true.)
The next question was about the Doctor’s Daughter. The woman said she thought maybe David had some info about what happened to her since he’s married to Georgia. David immediately said, “Why is that myresponsibility? I don’t run the show! Address your questions to Chris Chibnall. I’m…” He stuttered a bit, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
Somebody said something about it being left for fanfiction writers, and David immediately said, “Fanfiction, there’s a dark corner of the universe.” He continued to explain, “I don’t mean all fanfiction – some of it is very lovely, very creative, very wonderful, it’s the rude stuff!” Alex said she saw it, and he leaned towards Freema (who apparently didn’t see it) and started telling her about a time he was at Graham Norton’s and Graham gave him a bunch of fanfics they’ve found online, where, to quote him, “They imagined the Doctor, and Martha, and River and all the other characters having lives that they don’t necessarily enjoy on the television. In really graphic detail!” He said that the weirdest thing about it was that because they’re the physical aspect of these characters, people are actually describing their physical appearance – “and people who you know very well, but not in that way!” Even though the way he said it was hilarious, he sounded genuinely appalled by it – and I can understand, considering it is about him and his friends and cast mates. “Does anyone here write that stuff?” He asked, turning back to the audience. “Stop it!”
Alex continued to say that with the role the console of the Tardis (apparently) has, every time she’s there and she’s touching the knobs and buttons she’s reminded of the images she’s been sent, and she just wants to take a disinfectant spray and wipe the whole console.
The next person asked how it felt to redo Broadchurch in the US as Gracepoint (and whether he would do an American version of the Doctor if he could). He said that it’s been a big hit in the U.K. and it went well on BBC America but only a small percentage watched it, so Fox came up with the idea to do it again. He said that while that sort of thing worked in the past, he thinks nowadays it doesn’t really work anymore, because a show that succeeds in one place finds its way all over the world, everything is international now. He said that that’s only clear on hindsight, though, and at the time they just wanted to tell the story to a new audience, so they just changed everything, to fit the population they were doing it for. He was asked to do it, and he thought it’d be fun, so he agreed.
The woman who asked that asked if it was odd to do the same story again, and David said that yes and no, because “if you do a play, you tell the same story eight times a week”, so it wasn’t really that odd to tell the story once more. It was a bit of an acting challenge. “At least you know the scripts are gonna be great,” He said, to more laughter. He said it wasn’t exactly the same story, but most people have actually given up on the show before the changes appeared, so they wouldn’t know.
One of the moderators asked him how he did his American accent, whether he was coached, and David said he was, but it was kinda there already, because he (and everyone) grew up watching lots of American shows and movies, so it was all in there somewhere. The audience started cheering David to do the accent then, and David gave everyone one look and said, “No”. (Cue more laughter)
The next question was what has been their funniest moment on set. Alex said the funniest for her was the first time River encounters Eleven (The Time of the Angels). She was flown on a wire into the Tardis, and she flew straight into Matt’s arms… and kneed him in the groin. She was laughing so hard and she thought he was laughing, too, but for obvious reasons he wasn’t. On another episode she had to smack him, and that had to do that on multiple takes – which, again, she found very funny, but Matt didn’t really.
Freema said she remembers filming an episode – possibly The Shakespeare Code, because she remembers David saying ‘witchcraft’ – and they just couldn’t stop laughing. They’d been filming for hours, it was four in the morning, and whatever they did, they couldn’t stop laughing. They tried filming the saying of the word tons of times but couldn’t get through it. She said that’s how it was on Doctor Who – sometimes it was something specific that was funny, but sometimes it was just the time and how long they’ve been working.
David said that when he had the prosthetics as an old man (The Last of the Time Lords), they were filming Freema’s face as the Doctor whispered to her, and his face was buried in her hair, and he repeatedly tried to come up with the most disgusting things to say to her. ‘Do an old man a favour’ and things like that. He really enjoyed it. “Quite a dirty old man,” He said.
Following that, Alex remembered when she was the one to whisper to David, and his face was on camera (Forest of the Dead). She was supposedly whispering the Doctor’s name, and she whispered to him, ‘Shinyqua’ or something like that.
They all had a bit of a laugh over these memories (and we did, too), and then David said that sometimes, with Doctor Who, the weirdest things would just make them burst out laughing and that would be it. He remembered, when they did The Idiot’s Lantern (he remembered the episode’s name, just saying!), there was the moment when Rose was brought in without her face. It was a chilly moment, but when they were doing it, Billie’s face was just covered with just crosses for the CGI team to later take her face off. He said they took the sack off her head, and he saw her standing there, with her hair a mess, crosses all over her face and Billie all laughing, and he’d have to act all moved and angry. “That was one of the longest afternoons,” He said, all grinning and laughing. (By the way, some of this footage is available in the series 2 bloopers. You can just see David repeatedly trying to film that scene and repeatedly bursting out laughing every time.)
Apparently during Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead they brought in a deck of cards. When it was mentioned David immediately went, “Yeah, that was your episode!” as he looked at Alex, and Alex immediately replied, “My episode? I thought that’s all you ever do!”
“It was like, ‘oh, do we have to go and act? We’re in the middle of a card game.’ That’s all you ever did!” She teased him.
“You joined in! Stop it!” He protested, making us all laugh.
She continued to say that when they filmed they did this pop bands game, where someone says the name of a band, and then someone else says a name beginning with the last letter of the last name said, and so on. David had no idea what she was talking about, so one of the moderators helped her make an example. David, of course, got the hang immediately, gave the name of a band and went, ‘Now we’ve started, let’s go all across the room!’
Still, David insisted that he doesn’t remember that, he only remembers the cards. Freema immediately said, “We never played that!” and David immediately explained that they were stuck in one location for two weeks for that episode, something which never happens on Doctor Who, with all the constant changes. They were away from Cardiff, stuck in the same place… “It was sort of like we were… on camp,” He concluded.
Alex agreed and added that when they filmed those episodes they went to pub quiz nights. And as it turns out, David even won one night!
The next question was which race they met had the most interesting story in their opinion and why. David said that it’s a good question, and he thinks that his answer is the Ood. He said they were sort of the villains the first time we met them, but they weren’t really, and then we found out their history and society and how they’re born with their brains in their hands, so this was an interesting society and backstory.
Freema said what David said actually reminded her of the pig-men (Daleks in Manhattan & Evolution of the Daleks), and how they also started as the villains but they weren’t actually the villains, they were just taken and forced into that situation. “It was real, social commentary,” She said, “And I think that’s what Doctor Who does so exquisitely well.”
Freema’s answer was quite amazing, so there was a moment of ‘see you topping that’ before Alex spoke. Then she said, “You have not yet seen the worlds and species I have seen, so I won’t tell you, cos that would be a spoiler.”
The next person had a different question for each of them. The question for Freema was what her favourite scene was to film. She said it must have been the scene where Martha was cloned, because she’s never really done any stunts before, only watched David doing everything, so she was quite excited about it. She said she’d watched Paul do it, and then just did the same thing. She submerged herself, then waited for the tap on the container (their cue for ‘action’, as hearing was impossible), and then came up. Thing is, she had her eyes closed and she thought she was out before she actually was, so when she took a breath… it all went up her nose. She said that if we watch the scene, her throat is all locked because she’s trying not to cough – she knew if she does they’d have to do it again and she really didn’t want to. So she was just waiting for the ‘cut’ before letting it all out.
For David, the question was if he could live any scene of a previous Doctor, which would it be. David asked if he can pick something from a future Doctor, and after we all called out ‘yes!’ he said that the thing he was really jealous of was when Matt got to hang off the Tardis in Trafalgar Square. He said that before shooting Matt told him he’s going to do it, and David told him it’s not really going to happen, but Matt insisted that it will. And then, it actually happened and he was hanging from the Tardis, in the middle of London. He was really jealous of that.
The question for Alex was about The Wedding of River Song. The question was whether Alex was as confused about the timelines as most fans were (Alex actually talked about that the day before during her panel, by the way). Alex said she wasn’t confused about the timelines, but she got confused later when Moffat came up to her later and said that technically, she didn’t marry the Doctor, she married the Teselecta. She went, ‘No, I’m married to the Doctor, I’m the Doctor’s wife!’ She then admitted that she’s not entirely sure whether he’s really her husband or not, to which some fans called out ‘yes!’ from the audience. Alex admitted it’s confusing, and what you do is you just act it, and hope Moffat knows what he’s talking about (I wouldn’t go that far, but…).
The next question was what they prefer – playing the hero or the villain. David said it depends on the script; you don’t really approach a character deciding it’s a villain or a hero. It depends on the characters. He said he’s been really lucky to get to play great heroes and great villains, and everything in between. “What’s interesting is the shades of grey, really,” He said, “I think that’s where the characters come to life.” For him, it was interesting when the Doctor turned quite dark, or when Kilgrave’s story was told and his vulnerability and history came to light. “You try not to categorise any character too much, so they can live as real life as you can give them, I suppose,” He concluded. “Which is a bit of a way of not really answering your question, but that’s all you’re gonna get, thanks.” (Cue more laughter.)
Alex and Freema both agreed with David. They said it’s about the script, about the character, about whether or not you manage to connect to the character you’re reading for. It’s an instinct, some inner thing that there’s no way to describe, really, but it makes the connection to the character. Freema said that when she got the role in Doctor Who, she did a bit of research on David, and the first thing she saw him in was actually Secret Smile, and that was a pure villain. Even David agreed that Brendan was clearly a villain, whichever way you look at it. Freema also added that when they talk about a connection, it doesn’t necessarily mean identifying with the character – you need to find some sort of a connection to tell that character’s story, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you identify with it (people just tend to assume it does).
Alex told us that a little after she gave birth to her daughter, she was asked to read for the role of the headmistress of a school who abused children, and even though the part was interesting, she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t find a way to do it, just being a mother. Some roles just don’t feel right, and you have to know the differences between the ones you can and the ones you can’t do.
And that was it. Far too short, but absolutely amazing. The panel was over – much to our dismay – and they stood onstage for a coupe of minutes as we all stood and cheered, and that was it.