Who is your favorite Doctor? While I find this question to be one of the least interesting ones you can ask a Doctor Who fan, it is one that exists. And, for a lot of fans who came to the sci-fi series during its modern era, that answer is the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant. Even if he isn’t your favorite, it is clear why people love him so much. Like us, he’s a big fan of Doctor Who and plays the role with just passion, heart, and pure joy. But, David Tennant recently revealed that his previous agent told him to turn down the starring role on Doctor Who.
Tennant played the Tenth Doctor from 2005-2010 and later returned for the 60th anniversary specials as the short-lived Fourteenth Doctor in 2023. He revealed why he almost didn’t take the role on his podcast David Tennant Does a Podcast With…, saying, “About 40 hours after they asked me, and I sort of had to process everything that it meant. And I had an agent at the time who was like, ‘Don’t touch it. It’s not going to work.’ Not my current agent. A previous brilliant agent who’s since retired, but she didn’t call that correctly, as it turns out. She said, ‘It’s not been on yet, it’s not going to work. You don’t want that hung around your neck.’”
Obviously that agent was very, very wrong. But it is kinda understandable why she had reservations. At that time, Doctor Who was just coming back to television and David Tennant took the role before the first season was even fully underway on television.
His announcement as the next Doctor came in April 2005, only a couple of week’s after the first season’s premiere. Despite a season two renewal from the BBC, it wasn’t certain that this revival would be a success. So perhaps she thought it really would tank his career.
But, as his wife Georgia Tennant noted on the podcast episode, there was no way that David could turn down a chance to be the Gallifreyan hero. When Russell T Davies invites you to his house to watch episodes of his Doctor Who revival and personally asks you to be the Doctor, you take the job. And we are all grateful that he did.
Content shared from nerdist.com.