Queen Billie

Billie Piper Q&A Panel at Firenze Fantasy 2019 (March 17th, Florence, Italy)

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Trying to shoot the cat scene in Fear Her (Doctor Who Confidential)

Julie Gardner: Don’t keep me in suspense, tell me about the “used to be a dad” line.

Matthew Graham: Well, that was a Russell [T. Davies] suggestion, because the scene as-written was about the Doctor describing Chloe, or the Isolus that had taken Chloe over, as being like a spoiled child that just needed to be loved and looked after and sent on its way.  Rose, quite rightly - I imagine Rose comes from a reasonably big extended family or at least has hung around lots of kids over the years on the estate, and she’s got no time for it. She says to him, well, kids are spoiled and they shouldn’t be spoiled, and you’ve got to be firm with them. Russell said the Doctor should suddenly say, “hang on, I was a dad once,” and I gasped when he suggested that.

JG: It was an extraordinary moment in the script, and it was an extraordinary moment when we saw the first fine cut, because even though we understand the logic of it from how Doctor Who first started in 1963, it’s an extraordinary moment for Rose.

MG: It was

JG: Then it just moves on very quickly after that.

MG: Her reaction to it is more shocking than his revelation, actually

JG: Yes

MG: Because she reacts with genuine… because there’s always been that whiff of romantic frisson between them, the moment that he says that there’s so many things going through her mind. It’s another reason why, you know, Billie Piper is just an extraordinary actress. She manages to look hurt, frightened, confused, all in one… jilted, jealous… all in sort of one moment.

Favorite Doctor Who Confidential Moments (1/?)

“Those last two episodes are so beautifully paced,” thinks star David Tennant. “Again, it’s that whole Rose journey, which has been seeded throughout the series; the Mickey journey, the Jackie journey, the Pete Tyler journey, all of these chickens coming home to roost.  When I first read the scripts, I just cried my eyes out. Billie and I were two of only five people to have the Bad Wolf Bay pages, which were kept secret from everyone else. Even the crew didn’t know what they were filming that day. They just had to turn up. To this day, I don’t even know how many of them knew what they had filmed, because we were on a very windy beach. The sound man will have heard it, and they’d all have seen what was going on, but beyond that I don’t know how much people were aware of. I use the sonic screwdriver at one point and, because nobody had been given scripts or briefed, Phil Shellard, our standby props man, didn’t even know it was needed. But Phil is known as the Grand Master, so of course he had brought everything just in case. And then there was the Catherine Tate scene, which even fewer people knew about. That was filmed with five people. We wrapped the final day’s shoot for Series Two, which was for The Satan Pit, and everyone said, ‘Cheerio’. We came back a couple of hours later, once the studio had cleared. Graeme Harper came down and we filmed the Donna scene for the very, very end of Doomsday in top, top secret. Then we all went off to the wrap party as if nothing had happened.

• David tries to protect Freema & Catherine from his earth-shattering sneeze by moving away from them
• Freema covers her ears to protect herself from the sound-barrier breaking blast
• Catherine is 100% not bothered.  Not even the tiniest flinch
• That the producers of Doctor Who Confidential thought David’s sneeze (and Freema & Catherine’s reactions - or lack thereof) was worth including in the episode - and I thank them for it