This article was published in RT in March 2007 and is part of our digital Doctor Who anniversary bookazine. Click here to find out more.
It takes nine months to film a series. At the start, is there a sense of being waved off on a train by family and friends?
It does feel like coming back to school. You never do that as an actor: you do a little job and move on. It was weird coming back, but very pleasant seeing all the same people and going into the same old routine.
You have a flat in Cardiff. What do you pack for those nine months?
Mercifully, I didn’t really have to pack, because I didn’t have to move out at the end of last year. The flat gets kept on, so I now have two fully functioning flats [the other is in London]. The danger will be when this finishes, because I’ve doubled up everything. I don’t know where it’s all going to go. I might have to have a large car-boot sale.
When do you start work each day?
Filming usually kicks off at 8am — assuming it’s not a night shoot — which means you have to be here just after seven. I live about half an hour from the studios, so I usually get up around six.
Does that take a while to get used to?
It’s funny, you get into that routine quite quickly. Also, because of the nature of filming, that routine keeps being messed up because you go to night shoots, when you have to quickly rewire your body clock and try to get used to sleeping all day and waking up at 5pm to go to work. You just have to be continually flexible.
What’s the hardest part of being the Doctor?
That’s quite a hard question. This year’s been harder generally because we’ve done more nights and more odd hours and slightly further afield locations, just because the scripts have been more ambitious. The show keeps pushing itself and Russell [T Davies] keeps pushing what’s achievable. And we’ve been away on location: down to Wells in Somerset, the Globe, Warwick…
Mike HoganWhat was filming at the Globe like?
It was great. The curious part was, because we couldn’t get in until after the show finished at nine, we would start filming at about 11pm and shoot through the night. But there are daytime scenes in the Globe as well, so as the sun came up, we had to switch to the daytime scenes. Just as you were getting a bit weary around 6am, you had to switch to a whole other mode. The very nature of Doctor Who is that it’s all quite high-energy. You can’t allow yourself to droop.
How do you keep that energy up?
Oh, I don’t know. Black coffee? That’s the character, that’s the job, and it’s the nature of these kinds of scripts as well; that’s what you thrive on. Often the Doctor’s energy is what powers a scene, so you’ve got to match that. I don’t find it difficult, particularly. The very energy that comes off the script is what inspires you.
How do you fill time between scenes?
There are usually more lines to learn, new scripts arriving, or people like yourself to speak to. The time tends to get filled up.
How do you manage the day-to-day stuff like shopping and bills?
That’s the stuff that I find problematic. It’s the answer to your question about the hardest part of the job: keeping normal life going, remembering which bill hasn’t been paid.
What about shopping? When did you last go out and buy a CD?
I tend to get my CDs and DVDs via the internet. There’s a little spot just outside the men’s loos, just at the back of the studios here, where the wireless internet comes down from the office upstairs, so I spent about four weeks prior to Christmas crouched outside the gents’ toilets with my laptop, trying to get into various shopping websites, making sure I had something to take home to the family.
Presumably you now get recognised — is it disconcerting?
You acclimatise, but it was a bit of a shock at first. Doctor Who is a different level of attention. Billie and I got chased through the traffic once in a car. You expect paparazzi to do that, but when it’s normal people you start to think the world’s gone a bit mad. You’re literally having a car chase and some cabbie’s going, “Dahn’t worry. We’ll run this red light!” But I’ve had very few bad experiences.
Any funny stories?
A certain BBC presenter who I’d never met before came up to me at a party and went, “Hi, how you doing?” And I went, “Oh, hi, all right?” I knew who she was and I assumed she was just being friendly. We were chatting away: “That time we met…” and I’m thinking, “No, we haven’t!” Then she stopped and said, “That was Christopher Eccleston, wasn’t it?” Ha ha! She was mortified!
Do the days ever feel repetitive?
No, that’s why nine months shoot by. I can’t believe I’m nearly finished! We started on 1 July. It does seem a long time ago that Catherine Tate and I were doing the Christmas episode. I think, jings, this is such an extraordinary time and it’s flying by, and in my dotage I’m going to look back and think, that was the blink of an eye!
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