Peter Capaldi has revealed more about his life as a young fan, how the production team “checked him out” for the role, meeting Matt Smith for lunch and much more in an interview with Shortlist.
Speaking earlier this year, Capaldi revealed how the show was part of his childhood in the 1960s:
“Doctor Who was part of my upbringing in the Sixties, with The Beatles and Sunday Night At The London Palladium and school milk and bronchitis. It’s part of me. I had a huge collection of books and autographs and pictures, but when you reach the age of 17 or 18, you move on and discover sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. I’m ashamed to say I had a kind of bonfire of the vanities. I was quite a major geek, I had a huge collection of wonderful stuff, but I threw it all away to go and drink lager and eat curries. That was silly, wasn’t it?”
He also revealed that Mark Gatiss invited him to the set of An Adventure in Space and Time:
“Early last year, Mark Gatiss made a Doctor Who drama called An Adventure In Time And Space and he invited me to the set. I went down, I saw the old Tardis and met all the actors, got my photo taken and all that. And Mark said to me, “How would you feel about being Doctor Who?” I said I didn’t really know, and that I thought that ship had sailed. He just said back, “Oh, I don’t know.” I thought that was an odd question to be asked, but I didn’t like to think that it was in any way relevant, and perhaps it wasn’t. I haven’t talked to him about it, but I suspect they might have been checking me out.”
With Capaldi being the oldest Doctor since William Hartnell, will he be able to handle the rigours of the role:
“I took Matt Smith to lunch before we started and he came in on crutches. I said, “What happened to you, mate?” and he said “It’s this show, it’s this show…” I was just – he’s younger than me, what am I going to do? But it’s been fine, I try to keep myself fit and healthy and I enjoy it. I’ve done a lot of running up and down corridors – I don’t want to be an old Doctor just standing in the corner with the young people doing all the action for me. It’s great, you don’t have to do any exercise because you do a lot at work during the day.”
On why Doctor Who has endured for so long:
“It’s a mystery. I have lots of theories. To me, it’s a fairy tale. It embodies some key human desires – the desire for people to escape when their life is crappy. When things are going wrong, it would be very nice if you had a blue box you could use to disappear to another world. People love monsters, as well. There are very few shows with monsters in them, surprisingly – people like men in rubber suits. But there’s also something melancholic at the centre of it, I don’t quite know what it is. There’s a sense of mortality to it – the constant death and rebirth engages people, I think. Rebirth and rubber monsters. That would be a good title for a book…”
To read the full interview, where Capaldi speaks on how he was officially cast, his favourite stunt, whether he’ll take the role to darker places, whether he’ll be directing an episode and much much more check out the full interview at Shortlist.com
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