A Life in Time and Space - The Biography of David Tennant. Nigel Goodall
when after leaving Paisley Grammar, at the age of seventeen, he successfully gained a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he studied for a B.A. in Dramatic Arts, which covered every aspect of producing a show, whether it was for television or theatre. As part of the two-year course, the boy who wanted to be Doctor Who would learn all there was to know about movement, vocal projection, make-up, directing and stage management, and when he was through, he would be ready and qualified to go into teaching or serious acting. Even though David loved the all-consuming nature of drama school, as everyone now knows, he decided to go for the acting option: ‘I liked having to fit everything in and juggling maybe three or four parts at the same time. Being slightly too busy all the time is energising and inspiring, and it was a great experience, especially because I was so green.’
It was also during his spell at drama school that he changed his name, not by choice, but because he had to – already there was a David McDonald on the Equity books. Almost by accident, he came across his new surname: ‘I was on the bus looking through Smash Hits and I saw [Pet Shop Boy] Neil Tennant. I thought it would be a good name as it’s got a good number of consonants in it,’ he jokes. Not that his parents would agree. In fact, his mother wasn’t at all happy about the name he had chosen. She would have much preferred it, had he taken her father’s name, McLeod, or that of her mother, Blair. ‘But at sixteen,’ says David today, ‘I wasn’t having any of that.’
On leaving drama school in 1991, having already grabbed for himself a leading part in The Secret of Croftmore for ITV’s ‘Dramarama’ series, he moved onto repertory theatre, went on tour, and in between travelling the width and breadth of the Scottish Highlands, made periodic attempts to win a part in ITV’s Taggart, a goal he somehow never managed to achieve. ‘I’m the only Scottish actor alive who hasn’t been in Taggart,’ he laughs. ‘Some people have been in it five times, playing three different murderers.’ To overcome any disappointment he felt for not getting through any of the sixteen Taggart auditions he went for, he plumped for making his professional debut with the 7:84 Scottish Theatre Company in a touring production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.
‘The 7:84 company,’ David explains, ‘was formed by John McGrath in the 1970s and is still going strong. It takes two or three shows a year on one-night-stand tours around the Highlands and Islands, stopping longer in the larger towns. I went for the audition just after graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy, aged about twenty – a single-minded youngster, I had started there at the tender age of seventeen – and landed the part of Giri the hitman, my first professional part. I think there can have been only about six of us in the production – I suspect for monetary reasons, rather than artistic ones. Arturo Ui was one of those Brecht plays with thousands of characters. Inevitably, we shared them all out, with the help of a few wigs and fake noses. It was great fun, we were all young and up for it. Three of us had been at drama school together and I was terrifically excited. I was fresh out of college and really rather green, but I was earning a proper wage and having enormous fun touring Scotland in a small van. ‘Our first stop was Motherwell Civic Hall and the first performance was a disaster. We hadn’t had time to finish the technical rehearsal, let alone attempt a dress rehearsal. We might have managed, had the production not been so complicated but we were a group of travelling players who unpacked and made themselves up on stage, so of course everyone was changing, swapping props, losing props and mislaying wigs. It was utter chaos on stage as we struggled past the point at which we had ended the technical run. I remember thinking at one point: “This is my professional debut, and it’s all falling apart.” But we got through it. It may have been rusty and received terrible reviews, but the whole thing had a vibrancy and energy that I adored. And of course, I thought we were excellent.’
Not so excellent was the scathing review he alone received for his second job, playing King Arthur in Merlin in Edinburgh. Writing for The Scotsman, one theatre critic was particularly chastening: ‘The cast of eighteen are uniformly excellent with the exception of David Tennant, who lacks any charm or ability whatsoever.’ Even though he was pretty much floored by the review, it still wasn’t enough to put him off acting, or indeed, his goal of becoming Doctor Who. In fact, it was not long after the Edinburgh episode that things began to turn around when David headed down to London and moved in with comic actress and writer Arabella Weir.
‘I did a TV series for BBC Scotland. It was seen in England, too, and probably every job since then has been either directly or indirectly because of that.’
(David talking about Takin’ Over The Asylum – 2003)
David had not worked in television since the ‘Dramarama’ episode, and certainly never under his new name of David Tennant, so when the BBC called him up five years later, in which time he had been treading the boards in Scottish repertory, to ask if he would like to play a transsexual barmaid named Davina in an episode of the hit comedy series, Rab C. Nesbitt, he was over the moon.
The show, which ran on BBC from the late eighties until the end of the nineties, was one of the most underrated series of its time, but as most critics agree, it still stands up as being one of the most popular, funny and daring sitcoms of the 1990s. To all intents and purposes, this was one of the key Scottish programmes being made at the time.
In the episode in which David appeared, Rab C. (played by Gregor Fisher) and his friend Jamesie Cotter (Tony Roper) are left wide-eyed and wondering when David, as Davina, pulls pints in their local. They spend the rest of the show trying to figure out whether Davina, with her long, curly, brown locks and scarlet lips, is a man or a woman until a sleazy boss, played by Andy Gray, learns the truth when he makes a pass at her.
David was only twenty-one when he filmed the episode and, undeniably, it was his first real breakthrough into television. If nothing else, it showed that he was willing to turn his hand to any kind of role in his bid for fame and fortune. Even though, as one critic pointed out, he ‘scrubbed up not too badly as a woman’, one cannot help wondering whether he would prefer his appearance and overall performance to be best left forgotten.
At first glance, it is probably one of the most unlikely parts that anyone would expect him to play. Much the same, perhaps, as his role as a manic depressive in the six-part Scottish TV drama, Takin’ Over The Asylum (1994), which has now surfaced, not unexpectedly, on DVD, with David’s original, previously unseen audition tape and commentary.
In a way, it was down to luck that he was cast at all. Although the show’s production team auditioned actors to play the role, they still hadn’t found the right person. Director David Blair, who had recently cast David in a small part in Strathblair soon after he had left drama school, suggested they give him a chance to audition for the part, but the casting director was unsure. After all, it was a pivotal role and there was a sense that a more experienced actor was needed to carry it off. Nevertheless the team went up to Glasgow to meet him.
The reason why the audition tape still exists to this day is down to the fact that there was no budget to fly the writer of the show, Donna Franceschild, up to Scotland with the programme-makers, so instead Blair arranged for the audition to be videotaped for her. As soon as she saw the tape, she was blown away, just as the casting director had been. David, it seemed, was on his way.
Described by Scotland on Sunday as ‘superb, brilliantly filmed without being intrusive writing that makes you chuckle and gulp in the same sentence, and tour de force performances’ it was, according to most critics and viewers, an engrossing comedy drama that explored the issues surrounding mental health with sensitivity and black humour. So applauded was the series that it won a BAFTA for Best Serial and an RTS Award for Best Writer.
The show centred on Eddie McKenna, played by Ken Stott, a double-glazing salesman, who moonlights as a DJ for hospital radio in St Judes, a Scottish mental asylum. He nurtures close friendships with the patients there, including Francine,