#den of geek interview

[debdarkpetal]

[carpe-mamilia]

Ghosts’ Larry Rickard Explains Why They Chose the Captain’s First Name

Photo: Monumental,Guido Mandozzi

It couldn’t be a joke. That was one rule laid down by the Ghosts creators when it came to choosing a first name for Willbond’s character. Until series five, the WWII ghost had been known only as The Captain – a mystery seized upon by fans of the show.

“It was the question we got asked more than anything. His name,” actor and writer Larry Rickard tells Den of Geek. “Once we got to series three, you could see that we were deliberately cutting away and deliberately avoiding it. We were fuelling the fire because we knew at some point we’d tell them.”

In “Carpe Diem”, the episode written by Rickard and Ben Willbond that finally reveals The Captain’s death story, they did tell us. After years of guessing, clue-spotting and debate, Ghosts revealed that The Captain’s first name is James. At the same time, we also learned that James’ colleague Lieutenant Havers’ first name was Anthony.

The ordinariness of those two names, says Rickard, is the point.

“The only thing we were really clear about is that we didn’t want one of those names that only exists in tellyland. It shouldn’t be ‘Cormoran’ or ‘Endeavour’. They should just be some men’s names and they’re important to them. The point was that they were everyday.”

Choosing first names for The Captain and Havers was a long process not unlike naming a baby, Rickard agrees. “It almost comes down to looking at the faces of the characters and saying, what’s right?”

“We talked for ages. For a long time I kept thinking ‘Duncan and James’, and then I was like ah no! That would have turned it into a gag and been awful!” Inescapably in the minds of a certain generation, Duncan James is a member of noughties boyband Blue. “Maybe with Anthony I was thinking of Anthony Costa!” Rickard says in mock horror, referencing another member of the band.

Lieutenant Havers wasn’t just The Captain’s second in command while stationed at Button House; he was also the man James loved. Because homosexuality was criminalised in England during James’ lifetime, he was forced to hide his feelings for Anthony from society, and to some extent even from himself.

In “Carpe Diem”, the ghosts (mistakenly) prepare for the last day of their afterlives, prompting The Captain to finally tell his story. Though not explicit about his sexual identity, the others understand and accept what he tells them – and led by Lady Button, all agree that he’s a brave man.

Getting the balance right of what The Captain does and doesn’t say was key to the episode. “It wasn’t just a personal choice of his to go ‘I’m going to remain in the closet’,” explains Rickard. “There wasn’t an option there to explore the things that either of them felt. That couldn’t be done back then – there are so many stories which have come out since the War about the dangers of doing that.

“We wanted to tell his personal story but also try to ensure that there was a level at which you understood why they couldn’t be open, that even in this moment where he’s finally telling the other ghosts his story, he never comes out and says it overtly because that would be too much for him as a character from that time.

“He says enough for them to know, and enough for him to feel unburdened but it’s in the fact that they’re using their first names which militarily they would never have done, and in the literal passing of the baton”.

The baton is a bonus reveal when fans learned that The Captain’s military stick wasn’t a memento of his career, but of Havers. As James suffers a fatal heart attack during a VE day celebration at Button House, Anthony rushes to his side and the stick passes from one to the other as they share a moment of tragic understanding.

“From really early on, we had the idea that anything you’re holding [when you die] stays with you. So it wasn’t just your clothes you were wearing, we had the stuff with Thomas’ letter reappearing in his pocket and so on. And the assumption being that it was something The Captain couldn’t put down, it felt so nice to be able to say it was something he didn’t want to put down.”

Rickard lists “Carpe Diem”, co-written with Ben Willbond, among his series five highlights. He’s pleased with the end result, praises Willbond’s performance, and loved being on set to see Button House dressed for the 1940s. He’s particularly pleased that a checklist of moments they wanted to land with the audience all managed to be included. “Normally something’s fallen by the wayside just because of the way TV’s made, it’s always imperfect or it’s slightly rushed, but it feels like it’s all there.”

Rickard and Willbond also knew by this point in the show’s lifetime, that they could trust Ghosts fans to pick up on small details. “Nothing is missed,” he says. “Early on, you’re always thinking, is that going to get across? But once we got to series five, there are little tiny things within corners of shots and you know that’s going to be spotted. Particularly in that very short exchange between Havers and the Captain. We worried less about the minutiae of it because you go, that’s going to be rewound and rewatched, nothing will be missed.”

The team were also grateful they’d resisted the temptation to tell The Captain’s story sooner. “We’d talked about it every series since series two, whether or not now was the time, but because he’s such a hard and starchy character in a lot of ways you needed the time to understand his softer side I think before you had that final honest beat from him.”

“What a ridiculously normal name to have so much weight put on it for five years,” laughs Rickard fondly. “Good old James.”

From Den of Geek

[ewanmitchellclub]

“Although Aemond is the second son, he very much thinks that he should have been the first,” Mitchell says. “Aegon squandered his inheritance while Aemond lived with the maesters, trained with Ser Criston Cole, and became the baddest man in the Red Keep yard.”

Ewan Mitchell for Den Of Geek

[bloodofakashainme]

Just had the sudden urge to curate a sticker binder but Walmart is closed right now *sigh*

[jafark]

[petercapaldi-press]

INTERVIEW

Doctor Who: Peter Capaldi series 9 interview

August 18, 2015

On a June visit to the Doctor Who studios in Cardiff, we enjoyed a round-table chat with Peter Capaldi about series 9…

Despite being hamstrung by a list of not-for-discussion topics as long as the Mara (plot specifics, new monsters, returning characters, series arcs…), you can always rely on Peter Capaldi to fill an interview to the brim.

It helps that he's fluent in nerdy Doctor Who detail, from anecdotes about his old pal Jim, designer of the original Zygons, to being able to reel off the name of Jon Pertwee’s season eight stuntman, to chatting about Chumblies.

Along with a handful of fellow journalists at the Cardiff studios earlier this year, we spoke to Capaldi about all of the above, series nine, looking back at his first year in the role, his own fandom, and more…

On where the Doctor and Clara are at the start of series nine:

I think that the Doctor and Clara are sort of celebrating this freedom that they have, to roll through time and space wherever they want to go, and are having a high time. I think they’re having a brilliant time. They’re really, really excited about the idea of adventure and they keep pointing themselves in that direction, but of course, being as it’s Doctor Who, that’s a dangerous thing to do, not just in terms of the dangers that they will encounter but also, you can’t have a good time for too long. You have to pay for it somewhere down the line [laughs].

I think [the Doctor]’s moving. I think that the nice thing about what we’re doing, what I find interesting about it, is that the Doctor’s still sort of looking for himself. So he’s changed to some degree. I mean, he hasn’t changed, he’s still the same, he still has the same concerns and worries and darkness if you like, but he’s embracing the present. But that’s really because he has a profound knowledge of the past and the future. In this incarnation he is, I think, sometimes prone to… He’s wiser than he often says. He knows that things can often end in great distress, but rather than focusing on that, I think he’s decided to have a good time. But it doesn’t mean that he’s not aware that darkness will fall… or whatever phrase I can think of that they can print that sounds good!

On how Clara’s teaching job fits in to series nine:

She’s still there teaching. She can be full-time teaching, because I can just whoosh her away and bring her back before she left. […] I love having the school and the fact that it’s Coal Hill School and also that the younger audience can related to that in a very clear way. She’s still very busy there.

On working with Game Of Thrones’ Maisie Williams in series nine:

Maisie’s been great, because I’m huge Game Of Thrones fan, so I was very excited for Maisie to show up. She amuses me incredibly. Maisie’s been on Game Of Thrones since she was twelve! So she’s very, very assured, technically [laughs]. She’ll always find her light, she knows where to stand. She knows all the right questions to ask. Jenna and I were quite intimidated by her authority when she arrived [laughing] because we’re a bit more… we throw it together a little bit more. But she’s great, because also she has that great combination of being very gifted—you’ll see what she does on the show, she has to cover quite a range, she has to be quite different in different episodes, and she does it quite beautifully and subtly—but it’s also great to have someone who, you know, she had her eighteenth birthday with us. It’s great to have somebody who’s eighteen around, because she’s full of fun and vigour and life and she’s not spoiled. But at the same time you can get Game Of Thrones gossip off of her [laughs]. She starts telling me it and then she starts revealing things I don’t want to know so I have to get her to be quiet.

On welcoming Michelle Gomez’s Missy back for series nine:

Michelle’s fabulous. The mechanics of that story are slightly different. […] It’s good, it’s good. Michelle’s great. She’s very funny. But it’s slightly different. We sort of help each other.

On the return of the Zygons in series nine:

Aren’t they good? They’re fantastic monsters aren’t they? I worked with the man who designed them, who was Jim Acheson, who became a very, very celebrated costume designer. I was in the film of Dangerous Liaisons, for which he did all these fabulous eighteenth century costumes for Glenn Close and John Malkovich—I had a little part in it—and all I wanted to talk to him about was Zygons! And also, because he designed Tom Baker’s original [Doctor Who] outfit, and I think he designed the Mutants as well. He was fascinating. I asked him about it. He was slightly embarrassed I think. He was moving into a higher area—I think he’d won Oscars and all those kinds of things for his Costume Design. […] Even if you go back through all the Doctors and look at the ones that he’s done, the monsters and the costumes do stand out from some of the lesser concepts.

On having the Daleks back in season nine:

So many of them! Which is lovely. Not having them all CGI-created, to actually have a whole pile of them in the room. It’s very exciting, very mobile. It’s lovely to go into that. I don’t know if you saw the set. That was great. It had a lovely kind of sixties feel about it. […] When you looked at that set there was a sense of it that it was in widescreen for some reason, it sort of reminded me of the movies as well, the Doctor Who movies.

On what Jenna Coleman gives him as a performer:

Well, she’s great fun. We’re very simpatico in terms of how we like to work, but she’s just brilliant. That’s the thing with Jenna. You’ll sort of be having a laugh and all that and think ‘oh we’re rolling along here’ but then she’ll do a bit of acting and you’ll think ‘oh God, I’d better up my game a bit here because she just delivers this fabulous, truthful, emotional, potent acting. So she keeps me on my toes like that. I think in terms of the Doctor and Clara, it’s not dissimilar really. I guess maybe that’s developed as we’ve gone along. She sort of tries to make him more [laughs] amenable to the human race and Jenna tries to do that with me as well. She tries to help him function more successfully with ordinary human beings.

On his chemistry with Jenna Coleman in series eight:

We were sort of instantly in that zone. She was so kind to me right from the start, from the moment I arrived, to do the Regeneration. She was the first person that came and showed me around the TARDIS and all that stuff. She was very, very supportive and friendly, as everybody was. It’s quite scary stepping into this role and especially on your first day when there’s like, 250 people standing, looking at you. But I always felt Jenna’s support. 

Also we don’t plan much, we just turn up and see what each other’s got in mind. I might have an idea and it might be garbage. She might have an idea and that might be garbage. But somewhere, we’ll come up with something. Also it’s useful to have someone who, first of all had already done the show for a year before I arrived, so she was able to keep me posted on the stresses and strains and the mechanics of it.

On how much Steven Moffat tells him about the series arc and where the Doctor is going to end up in the series finales:

This year in particular they have kept me in the dark. It comes out through gossip, because I hear things and people have to put costumes together, and the crew generally walk around with scripts [laughs] of episodes which I don’t see. Steven, generally, in the two years I’ve done, he’s always given me an evening where he’s taken me through the whole series, but in this instance, I don’t know what’s happening at the end.

I think it’s easier [not to know]. I’m not sure I would be able to act better if I knew. If the Doctor doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him, how am I supposed to, what would I do, if I knew?

On whether there’s anything he might like to do more or less of, looking back at series eight:

Not really. I mean, I’m not involved in writing the scripts so whatever comes is whatever comes, and it’s very, very good and particularly strong this year. I think all Doctors when they come along at first probably react against the Doctor who was before them, because obviously Matt was very friendly and open, and I probably felt it was important to not be like that. I still think it’s important to not be like that. He’s still not like that, but Clara has to try to create strategies to help him function with human beings more successfully [laughs] which is quite fun.

But no, I think we made good choices. But I think it’s right that he grows as a character. It must be a very weird thing if you’re suddenly Regenerated, if you’re suddenly a new—although you’re essentially the same character—you’re a new spirit, a new being, you’re like a baby who has to discover who you are. So he’s still on that journey, even though it may appear that he’s settled into a groove. I think he’s still—and I think they all are—they’re all looking for who they are, hence the title.

On his series nine stunts:

Yeah. I get good stunts. I love the stunts because they’re often done and I emerge at the end of them adjusting my wig! The stunts are good. I always love stunts on Doctor Who. One of my favourite moments [laughs] I think it’s Terror Of The Autons, when, at the climax, the Master drives a bus towards Jon Pertwee. He’s going to run over Jon Pertwee! And the bus is almost upon Jon Pertwee and at the last moment, Terry Walsh, Jon Pertwee’s stunt-man, does a spin back and rolls away from the bus and then it cuts to a close-up of Jon Pertwee getting up! You think yes! That’s what I want to do.

On how he experiences the new stories as both a Doctor Who fan and actor:

I guess those two bits of me are welded together. The fan and the grown-up professional actor—the not very grown-up, professional actor! So I just look at the material from the point of view of how I can make this work and how best I can do my job with it. But at the same time I’m always excited, because there’s always something fun in it that I really, really like. I’m always excited to see a new monster or an old monster.

I don’t get giddy and breathless with excitement [laughter] but there is a very warm, honeyish feeling you get when you walk into a roomful of Daleks or you see the Zygons. So I enjoy it, but I always think the whole fan relationship with Doctor Who is actually kind of private and intimate really. Although it’s a massive brand and there are millions of fans all over the world and they all communicate with each other, I think each individual’s relationship with the show is quite individual and I carry that with me. I have my own relationship with it.

You know, I couldn’t be gushing. Everyone would hate me if I turned up every day and went ‘Oh look! There’s another rubber monster! How fantastic! And here’s another corridor to run down!’ although I do feel like that most of the time!

On whether he feels a parity between his experience and that of a Who actor like Carole Ann Ford [who visited the set of Doctor Who last year]:

I think it’s a different show but everybody’s sort of linked. And you know it’s important. Someone like Carole Ann, I think she knows how respected she is. There’s a kind of dual thing because I can see it from the point of view both as a fan and as an actor. What was it like to be an actor in the sixties? Going to Vidal Sassoon to get your hair cut and trying to be trendy and work with Verity and all that stuff and be part of that, and what jobs did you go on to and… so I have a respect for her as an actor, but also her place on the show is very important and key.

And of course, she’s my granddaughter. I’m always fascinated by that. I always think that’s one of the most haunting moments in the show is William Hartnell and her, and I wish we could somehow echo that and bring it back, or do something with that.

On which past Companion he’d like his Doctor to meet up with again:

I think they’re all fab. Katy Manning was fab. I met her as well, she came along. The late Lis Sladen of course was fantastic. They all did a great job. Karen. I met Karen Gillan a few times, she was great fun. But of the older ones… Ian and Barbara. At the moment, today I’m hankering back to those. I’m not every day like this, but there’s something about that and Coal Hill school and the beginnings of the show. I think one of the things that I sort of bring with me because of my age is probably an echo of all of that. Barbara I think was remarkable. She was very glamorous for a teacher at Coal Hill school [laughing] I suppose Jenna maintains that position. Yeah, it’d be nice to see them.

On going the extra mile for fans:

To be honest, I don’t think I do any more than Matt or David or Chris or anybody does. It’s just that we live in a new age so it’s more communicated and reported. I think they did as much if not more. You just walk around with this sense of this constant murmur of letters and stuff that you can’t deal with. You can’t get round everybody. I do the little drawings sometimes just because I doodle and it seems slightly more personal to do something like that. I don’t think I particularly do anything special. It’s a real great privilege of the job in the sense that you know you can make people quite happy just by showing up and they’re very forgiving. They don’t ask very much of you.

On how he came to drop in at Cardiff’s Doctor Who Experience in March 2015:

I was there because I usually go back home to London at the weekends but for personal reasons I was staying around that weekend and my wife said ‘Why don’t we just pop in and see what happens?’ [laughs] And also, I’d never been through it. Although we’d filmed there and I’d done a thing upstairs where I’d showed up, I’d never actually done the whole tour as it were, so I thought yeah, that’ll be a laugh, let’s go and do that. And also of course, you know or you hope that you’ll be able to make some people happy just by showing up and indeed, that’s the case. That’s the sort of gift that’s been given to me, because, believe me, it’s much more fun for me to be held in such esteem.

On whether he sees his younger self in other Doctor Who fans:

I think I remember what it’s like and I think I know how important it is. Which is why I kind of have this sack full of guilt, because I simply can’t do everything. You can’t. So I try to do what I can but to be honest, there’s probably going to be a time when I’m going to have to say I’m going to pull back because you won’t have enough time to do the show. But I stress again that I don’t think I do any more than anybody else.

On which monster from Doctor Who’s past he’d like his Doctor to face:

There’s so many of them. Often, if I’m asked that question I try to pick the most obscure one, like the Chumblies! Just because they’re obscure. I would like the Daemons. I think what would be fun. It’s always fun to see the older monsters recreated with new technology because they’re given a couple of coats of paint but they retain the original idea, so it would be nice to see some of the older ones given that. I think the Daemons would be good because they’re a little bit black-magic-y. I like the monsters that are a little bit supernatural, not just sci-fi ones, but who have got a kind of horror movie element to them.

The Axons would be good as well. Steven always says they’ve got a face like a Bafta [laughter] I don’t know why, maybe because he’s got plenty of Baftas, he’s sick of them! [laughs] If you look at them at the time—people do their best, people do their best but you know, skin-tight cat-suits and gold paint—but then they transform into these horrible squidgy things. I just think they’d be good all modern.

And of course also the Mondassian Cybermen, which I constantly crusade for.

On how the pressure has changed for him between his first and second series:

I think it’s the same. I think you may have the sense that you’ve succeeded in having your contract renewed for the next series [laughs], so you’ve got another year, so you’re happy about that! But you can’t sort of rest, you’ve got to continually try to make it as good as you can make it. So you’re constantly looking for ways to be interesting and entertaining.

Doctor Who is like any other episodic television programme, you often find yourself in similar situations. If you’re on a cop show, every week you have to face a murder, so you have to face the same questions. So the Doctor often finds himself in a similar place. How did this dreadful situation happen and why are these monsters here and what’s going on? You have to find sort of both new ways to do that and also revisit the old ways that people are happy with.

I think they write for me much more now and I think it’s more expanded into aspects of my personality possibly that they are more familiar with. There are various things we do and he does in the TARDIS that are more sort of personal to me. He’s more like me I guess, in his stupider aspects [laughs] and less like me in his heroic aspects. Because he’s much more heroic and braver  than I would ever be.

Peter Capaldi, thank you very much!

Doctor Who returns to BBC One on Saturday the 19th of September.

[harveyguillensource]

In an interview with Den of Geek, Harvey talks about the prosthetics work used to realize Guillermo's transformation-in-progress on WWDITS season 5:

[maritamorgado]

Jeffrey Dean Morgan & Lauren Cohen on Negan & Maggie's Relationship in The Walking Dead: Dead City

Credits to Den Of Geek

[munsongirly]

New interview with Joseph Quinn, Lupita Nyong'o and Michael Sarnoski about 'a quiet place: day one' for DEN OF GEEK. ✍️: DEN OF GEEK.

[jocia92]

Photo: Nick Morgulis

You’ve had this incredibly interesting, varied career so far, but when researching, one of the first things that comes up is the interview on Good Morning Britain with Susanna Reid when she asks you how many actors you had to beat off to get the role in The Guest…

That has probably been seen more than all of the rest of my body of work combined and will probably outlive everything I’ve ever done. That’s kind of great. It was very early one morning after getting off a red-eye flight, and Susanna Reid had been given very odd questions. I love moments like that. They’re unexpected. That was a good nine or 10 years ago, and because of the nature of the internet, it pops up on these viral meme sites every few weeks, and someone will send it to me as if it just happened that week. There’ll be a crew member who doesn’t know who I am from Adam and hasn’t seen any of my work. But they did see that clip on Good Morning Britain and thought it was hilarious. It was just pure reaction and pure very tired Dan on live television.

It was very funny.

The real answer I should have given was 17. But you know, I wasn’t thinking that fast. 

[nalyra-dreaming]

Yes please

(older article but it contained the music title I was looking for 😈)

x

[debdarkpetal]

[vvitchard]

Our RPF King: Assad Zaman

assad out there writing his own fanfictions

[ewanmitchellclub]

“One of the first things we talked about in the development stages of Aemond was the legend of the Cyclops in Greek mythology,” Mitchell says. “How he traded one of his eyes to Hades in order to see the day he would die. What would that do to a person to possess that extreme degree of self-certainty and belief? It’s scary, you know. Aemond scares me.”

Ewan Mitchell for Den Of Geek

[jafark]

[petercapaldi-press]

INTERVIEW

Peter Capaldi interview: Doctor Who series 8

We chat to Peter Capaldi about series 8, getting the part, the new Doctor's relationship with Clara, and being a Doctor Who fanboy...

By Louisa Mellor | August 18, 2014

Peter Capaldi, as anyone who’s seen him interviewed will know, has a keen way with an anecdote. His punch-line timing and mastery of the long dramatic pause would be the natural accompaniment to a lazy lunch table or an after-hours bar. It’s less well-suited, admittedly, to a twelve-minute round-table interview, but twelve shared minutes with Peter Capaldi are still golden, especially now, on the eve of his Doctor Who debut proper.

This June, at the BBC’s Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff, Capaldi took us back to early 2012, when – he now realises with hindsight – Mark Gatiss first dropped him the hint that he was under consideration to follow Matt Smith in the role of the Doctor. He tells us about receiving the phone call that confirmed he’d won the part, the frustration of not being able to tell anyone, and about an uncanny encounter with a young Moravian Who fan. He also tells us about his take on the new Doctor, a character he describes as “not as user-friendly” as his most recent predecessors…

Steven Moffat has described your Doctor as “fiercer, madder and more unreliable”, does that sum it up for you?

Well there’s more to it than that I think, but it’s interesting to hear him say that. He’s never said that to me. I don’t know. Obviously everyone wants to know what the new Doctor’s like and to be honest, it’s almost as mysterious to me as it is to you because it sort of develops as we go. Obviously Steven has very specific ideas, but then sometimes they alter as we work them and sometimes we see things very clearly that are the new Doctor and some things that are not, and so organically it changes. But you just get on with it and see what works.

Whenever you ask anyone involved what they were looking for with the new Doctor, they always say someone who is dangerous, changeable and you can’t quite trust them, and the only person we ever thought of for that role was Peter Capaldi!

[Laughter]

Are you at all offended by that?

[Laughing] No, I’m not at all. I was laughing the other day because I used to do voiceovers – I don’t mean I used to do them, obviously I’m not doing them now because I’m doing this all the time – and I did a voiceover for butter or something and they said to me ‘Could you be a little less sinister?’ [Laughter] That’s how far it’s come! I’ve gone from amiable geek in Bill Forsyth films to sinister butter salesman.

Is avoiding being too sinister something you’ve had to think about in regard to the children in Doctor Who’s audience? I saw a sweet fan video where you were having to reassure two children that you were going to take care of the Doctor, that Matt had said it was okay for you to be the Doctor.

The constituency of the audience needs to be reassured that it’s fine. Whether it is fine or not I’m not sure! [laughter]. The Doctor is as he has always been and he is also totally different. I know that’s no use to you whatsoever but it’s true – that’s the great thing about Doctor Who, it carries its past with it all the time and so he brings the past with him. Even if he’s different, I think probably if people think he’s different they’re really meaning in contrast to Matt and David who were both very amiable and I loved what both of them did with the part but he’s probably not as user-friendly as they are. He’s unmistakeably Doctor Who – I think – I would say that, but I think so.

David Tennant said that his favourite was Peter Davison and he looked to him for inspiration and Matt Smith cited Patrick Troughton. Was there anyone in particular that you thought of as your Doctor…

No. No, seriously. Because Doctor Who started when I was four so Doctor Who is part of my upbringing in the sixties with The Beatles and Sunday Night At The London Palladium and school milk and bronchitis and smog and all of these things [laughter] so it’s part of me, so all of those Doctors, all of them, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for every single previous Doctor there’s been. I just stand on their shoulders and it’s due to each and every one of their individual charisma and talent and gifts that the show’s still here, so I don’t have a specific Doctor that I look to, but I look to them all. I do look to them all, but I don’t have a specific one that I say is mine.

Can you take us back to the moment you heard you’d got the part. We had a lovely anecdote from Brian [Minchin, executive producer] saying your agent told him you reacted like a drama student who’d just been offered their first professional role, it was that genuine sense of excitement.

Yes. Yes, well not long before we were talking the last time – because the last time we were talking I knew and I couldn’t say it because I wasn’t allowed to. You were asking me all these questions and I had to just sit there and say nothing.

It was sort of two phases. Initially my agents called about a year ago and said ‘How would you feel about being the new Doctor Who?’ and I just started laughing because it was such a joyful and ridiculous idea because I didn’t really think… although I’d seen it beginning to unfold in the papers. In fact some of the directors we’d had on The Musketeers had come from Doctor Who and as I’m kind of a fanboy I was always asking them what it was like and stuff like that and they kind of intimated that Matt might be going but I never thought… I thought ‘That’s interesting’, I was surprised he was going because I really like Matt. So I wasn’t expecting anybody to be calling me but I was interested in watching the process going on and then she called and said ‘how would you feel about that’ and I thought ‘that’d be great’.

A stranger thing had happened earlier in the year because Mark Gatiss has made this thing called An Adventure In Time And Space and he’d invited me to the set of that back in January. I went down and it was fantastic and saw the old TARDIS there, which was great and met all the actors, got my photograph taken with Doctor Who and all that stuff and Mark said to me ‘What would you feel about being Doctor Who?’, and I said ‘Oh I don’t know, I think that ship’s sailed don’t you?’ and he said ‘Oh, I don’t know’ and I thought, that’s an odd, strange question to be asked but I didn’t like to think it was in any way relevant, and perhaps it wasn’t, I haven’t talked to him about it, but I suspect he might have been checking me out or something, I don’t know.

What was it like when my agent called? It was hilarious. Then I had to go and meet Steven [Moffat] and we all had to make sure that we were all on the same page and then the BBC had to decide whether or not they thought it was a good idea and blah blah blah. It was a bit sort of drawn out, and then they called in the middle of The Musketeers, I was dressed as Cardinal Richelieu, I’d just done a scene torturing somebody or something and I got all these missed messages and finally got my agent and she said “Hello Doctor” and I couldn’t tell anyone! I couldn’t do anything. I had to go off into a corner and sort of scream, and walk around Prague singing the Doctor Who theme to myself.

The funniest thing that happened, the weirdest thing, was that while we were filming The Musketeers we left Prague and went to a place called Moravia in the north of the Czech Republic and there was a little town we were filming in because of some location we needed – we were supposed to be in the King’s Palace – and there was a little lad there who said to me in very very broken English “I really enjoy you as Doctor Who” so that was… I thought, this is really weird, what do you mean you really enjoyed me as Doctor Who? And he said “I enjoyed you in Fires Of Pompeii” which was an episode I did years ago, and he couldn’t speak English very well and I said ‘Oh right, so you saw that?” and he said “Yes, I’m a big, big Doctor Who fan, I’m a Whovian” and used the word Whovian. I thought this was so weird to be in Moravia with this…, so I said to him, ‘Have you got your camera with you? Go and get your camera, go and get your phone’. He wasn’t very interested in getting his picture taken with Cardinal Richelieu, but I said ‘I think you should get your camera’ because in a few weeks he’d have known I was Doctor Who.

You wrote in to the show when you were, what was it, nine or ten?

Slightly older than that, embarrassingly. I was fourteen.

What do you think your fourteen year old self would have said when he saw you dressed as Cardinal Richelieu taking that phonecall?

I think he’d be astonished, as the fifty-five year old version was, equally as astonished. I think he would have been… He would probably think it was more right [laughter], he would have probably thought it was [laughing] coming. I think when you’re a little kid, anything is possible. When you’re an adult, you don’t think that but kids believe anything’s possible, though I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. He would have been very excited and very embarrassing. I’m embarrassed to have all of my past dredged up. Who else would like to see your letters as a fourteen year old?

Every time the job’s come up since 2005, surely your ears pricked up?

I was always interested but I never thought they’d come to me, so I was always interested because I liked the show very much. I loved Chris, and David I thought was brilliant, and Matt, all of them I think have been fabulous, but I was always interested in being in it, I always hoped they’d call me, which they did at some point eventually, say come and be in an episode, but I never thought they would think of me as Doctor Who.

Why do you think the show’s endured so well? Why is it still so strong?

Well, it’s got monsters in it, they can change the leading actor – which, as Steven says, if every show could do that, they’d all last a lot longer – and I think because it has a grip on… it’s like a fairy tale, although it’s a sci-fi show, to me there’s an aspect of Grimm’s fairy tale about it where the Doctor takes you deep into the forest where there are monsters but he will return you to safety in the end and I think that colour in it is very potent and it appeals to a family audience.

It depends how long you’ve got! There are lots of other things in it which I think are deeper and they’re about death, and… Doctor Who has within it some of the cornerstones of the human psyche, the desire to be able to leave when the going gets rough – he always just disappears, he can just walk away from everything, and also that he dies, and is reborn.

That’s a Christian myth

Yeah, it is a very potent idea. It’s a show that young people and children can watch in which they are confronted with death but in a way that is not grief-stricken.

What can you tell us about your Doctor’s relationship with Clara?

It’s fun, I think. She finds it very difficult to deal with him. He doesn’t really do much to change himself in order to make himself palatable for her, so she struggles a great deal I think, to understand him and to find a way to like him. I think they do…, well, we haven’t finished yet, they struggle sometimes but she’s great, she’s very funny, I love Jenna and she plays it brilliantly, but it’s a more complex sort of relationship. It’s a relationship that doesn’t have any… you don’t look around in life and see any similar relationships.

Is it a case of her having to build up her trust again?

Yeah. Yes. There’s elements of that. He’s not a walk in the park.

So it’s definitely not a romantic relationship?

It’s not romantic, but it’s not without love.

So you’ve not been neutered then? Because you’ve got a lot of books and quite an avuncular look to your TARDIS…

I don’t think he’s avuncular [bursts out laughing] No. I don’t know where those books came from, but there they are.

Peter Capaldi, thank you very much!