Russell Tovey and Julie Gardner talk Doctor Who

In advance of my Being Human preview, which should pop up either today or tomorrow depending on work, I thought I’d give you a few Doctor Who nuggets that emerged from the Q&A following the showing of the first episode at the BFI on Friday.

Present – as advertised – was Russell Tovey, who appeared in the Christmas special The Voyage of the Damned and was once tipped as a front-runner for the part of the Doctor by Russell T Davies no less, and Matthew Bouch, producer of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Also present, but not as advertised since it was originally going to be BBC3 controller Danny Cohen, was Julie Gardner, head of drama for BBC Wales and exec producer for Doctor Who.

There wasn’t that much said about Who, for obvious reasons, but a few little anecdotes emerged.

Julie Gardner
On listening to fans: while she’s very much interested in audience interaction for reality shows and other similar programmes, she feels drama should be authored.

Has had some fun with fans, with one "uber fan" having chased her through the laundry department of Selfridge’s.

Russell Tovey
Preferred appearing in Being Human to Doctor Who since he spent all week by himself on the Titanic‘s bridge in Doctor Who, whereas he got to work with people in Being Human.

Got a text message from Russell T Davies on the day of the first read through for Being Human, saying that he’d nominated him for the Doctor in an interview with the Times. Did he mind? He figured very little would happen and at most everyone at the read-through might congratulate him, but he started getting texts from people saying "You were the first person I ever kissed". He describes the whole experience as "mad".

Matthew Bouch
Not much to say on Doctor Who/The Sarah Jane Adventures, other than the decision to use prosthetics and Millennium on Being Human was heavily influenced by his experiences on The Sarah Jane Adventures.