Saturday 30 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Saturday 30th June 2012



It was three years ago today that David Tennant recorded all his hosting slots for the US television series Masterpiece Contemporary.

This was quite a high profile slot for David in America as he was on screen to introduce a series of dramas on the PBS station each week.

Although David looks cool in the clips, apparently he recorded them in temperatures above 30 degrees in a hot TV studio!

Therefore the David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a series of eight videos where David talks about Masterpiece Contemporary, Doctor Who and acting in general.

Click here to view all eight videos (click on David's photos on the page).




Friday 29 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Friday 29th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a very funny clip from the movie LA Without A Map.

Be warned that it contains some spicy language!







Thursday 28 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Thursday 28th June 2012

One of the regular topics on the David Tennant Treat 4 Today is *just* a random photo of David Tennant.

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a photo which has been used before as a Treat but it's always worth repeating!





Wednesday 27 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Wednesday 27th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a video from The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2009 which was first broadcast on Channel Four on New Year's Day 2010 and shows David asking a question.

This was from the Christmas / New Year when David was leaving Doctor Who.




Tuesday 26 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Tuesday 26th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a MP3 from when David Tennant was on the Absolute Radio Breakfast Show in October 2010.

This clip is titled "I'm a movie, I'm a movie - which movie am I? (2)"





Monday 25 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Monday 25th June 2012

This photo has been used before as a David Tennant Treat 4 Today but it's well worth repeating!

As usual, click the picture for a larger version.



Sunday 24 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Sunday 24th June 2012

The prize in the David Tennant Quiz earlier today was a deleted scene from Voyage Of The Damned so the David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a deleted scene from Journey's End.







Saturday 23 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Saturday 23rd June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a clip from a radio item from earlier this week about True Love being filmed and set in Margate.

As well as a couple of clips from David's episode and a soundbite with writer Dominic Savage, the clip contains a brief interview with somebody David Tennant spoke to on the telephone for half an hour to get some background information about her job with Thanet Council as he based his role in True Love on that.

The announcer gets slightly confused about when David's episode aired (it was on Sunday) but the interviewee has some lovely things to say about David.







Friday 22 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Friday 22nd June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a deleted scene from The Doctor's Daughter.

This was to have been a scene at the end of the episode and is a lovely scene between The Doctor and Donna (David Tennant and Catherine Tate).





Thursday 21 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Thursday 21st June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a clip from Much Ado About Nothing and shows how well David Tennant interacts with a live audience.








Wednesday 20 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Wednesday 20th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a MP3 of the fourth and final part of the BBC Radio Four play The Rotters' Club which was broadcast in 2003.

David Tennant played Bill Anderton / Fudge in the four part drama which was described as "Jonathan Coe's touching tale of musical, political and sexual passion in 1970s Birmingham. The Rotters Club is for anyone who ever experienced adolescence the hard way."







Tuesday 19 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Tuesday 19th June 2012

Yesterday the David Tennant Treat 4 Today was 'that' kiss at ComicCon and today the David Tennant Treat 4 Today is the start of the Doctor Who panel at the event.






Monday 18 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Monday 18th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is that video of David Tennant and John Barrowman at ComicCon.

Need I write any more?!!!





Sunday 17 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Sunday 17th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a MP3 of David Tennant in Waiting For The Boatman which was broadcast on BBC Radio Four in March.

The photo below was taken during recording the drama.







Saturday 16 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Saturday 16th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a photo of a very young looking David Tennant!

As usual click the graphic for a larger version.



Friday 15 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Friday 15th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is one of David Tennant's most famous videos.

Or should that be infamous?!!



Thursday 14 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Thursday 14th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is part of an interview / article about David Tennant which was published on Sunday 23rd July 2000 in the newspaper Scotland On Sunday when David was at the RSC in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

"One of theatre's big discoveries, Tennant arrived at Stratford in January to start rehearsing his lead role in The Rivals. At the same time he rehearsed another starring part, that of the twin Antipholus in The Comedy of Errors. Both have opened to rave reviews and Tennant has won much praise for his performances. As Boyd, former artistic director of Glasgow's Tron theatre, describes, "He has a tremendous ability to communicate with an audience - he's like an open book. He has such an open face and an open spirit."

In The Rivals, one critic wrote that he "is blessed with the most eloquent left eyebrow since Roger Moore's". Another said of him in The Comedy of Errors: "Tennant's ingenuity and understated comedy are the production's making. His face speaks volumes and is as changeable as a weather-vane." And a third: "The best performance comes from David Tennant... rapidly establishing himself as one of the most endearing comic actors in the business."

Not that you dare quote any of these to "the skinny Scot frae Paisley". There is no time for reading reviews, he says, as we race down the stairs behind the scenes at the theatre and rush across to the Union Club, the RSC's version of the Groucho Club-on-Avon for company members, to dive into steak and kidney pie and coffee cake. He will read all his notices at the end of the season, when he will have played 97 performances as Jack Absolute, slid down the banisters as Antipholus 72 times and fallen in doomed love with Juliet 45 times. There have been two matinees every week, as well as six evening shows since The Rivals started previewing in March. "I don't want to know the total number," he says, as I prepare to quote the statistics. "I haven't dared count them. It's too terrifying, although once Romeo and Juliet opens I'll just be doing eight shows a week and getting days off, because I won't be rehearsing."

Tennant reckons he gets his first Monday off in August. "But to make up for it, we then do three matinees. I get a very short break in September, I think. It's quite full on, but it's that or you don't do the parts.

"He is perfect casting for Romeo, because of the intensity he brings to his work," Michael Boyd says. While Tennant's great friend and former landlady, the comic performer and author of Does My Bum Look Big in This?, Arabella Weir, says: "He's astonishingly focused for his age and amazingly straightforward and honest. He's trustworthy and he's honourable." Tennant lodged with her for five years when he "very trepidatiously" moved to London. Weir, whom he met on Takin' Over the Asylum, led him astray, he jokes. "She would shock me with the things she would say, but she finds it harder to shock me now. She probably corrupted me, but I probably needed corrupting a little bit. It sounds like we were lovers or something. We weren't. It was more she led me into the murky world of London. I think I was quite green when I left Scotland - I was blessed with a very good upbringing, because my parents are very moral, Christian people, but without all the brimstone and thunder nonsense."

There is still something uncynical and unspoilt about him, though. He confesses that being with the RSC can be scary. "Not only because you are in the home of 'world class classical theatre' (as all the brochures tell you), but these big Shakespearean roles come with a lot of historical baggage attached. People tell you how romantic Ian McKellen was as Romeo, or how masculine Sean Bean was, or how marvellous Laurence Olivier was. You feel the weight of all those ghosts, those performances that have taken on a mystical resonance. And because it's Shakespeare, you feel it's hard to make it believable, because it is so beautiful. "With this play, everyone has so many ideas about it, that you almost want to play against the beauty. We did the balcony scene the other day and I was doing: 'But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!' And I was going: 'How can I say that?' It is beyond parody, but all you can do is be personal with it and make it your own, if that doesn't sound too pretentious. I know that's how Alex [who plays Juliet] feels about famous lines like, 'Parting is such sweet sorrow'."

Rehearsals carry on into the evening, although Tennant has to dash off to a warm-up, then strut his stuff in The Rivals. The last "Bravo!" is still echoing in his ears as he flies out of the stage door, clutching his shopping. "The milk and the orange juice will be curdled. They have been in my dressing-room all day," he says gloomily. There is not even time for a post-show pint in the actors' local, the Dirty Duck. He has, he notes, only been there twice since January. "I'll make up for it once Romeo's up and running," he promises.

After the show, which finishes at 10.30pm, he drives the mile-and-a-bit to his flat, watches TV for half an hour to unwind, and then goes to bed with the Arden edition of "the greatest love story ever told". Then, the next morning, he's up at 8am, eats a bowl of Honey Nut Shredded Wheat - "my only concession to healthy living" - and drives back to the theatre, where he showers, goes shopping at Marks & Spencer for lunch, then starts rehearsals again at 10am. "I'm marrying Juliet this morning," he says. "Knowing Michael, it'll be something unusual and different. Swinging from the chandeliers? Probably."

The intensity of the rollercoaster he is on is overwhelming. Stratford is a gruelling, sometimes stifling, hothouse. Rehearsal followed by show, followed by rehearsal, in one long punishing schedule. After one-and-a-half hours in the rehearsal room, there is just time for a snack before voice warm-ups for the matinee of The Rivals. There, Tennant's rapier-thin young blade gets involved in sword fights and various cunning derring-do disguises, then he is off again for lunch. And back on again, for The Comedy of Errors. A short show, but a physical one, as Tennant slides down those banisters, executes pratfalls and turns in a brilliantly funny double act with Ian Hughes, who plays his manservant, Dromio. He also does the neatly witty trick of lighting two post-coital cigarettes after seducing his long lost twin's wife and then buries his head in Nina Conti's cleavage.

Later Tennant is in his dressing-room, stripped to the waist, slapping Simple moisturiser onto his face, swigging pints of mineral water, and packing up his make-up box, an old-fashioned leather bowling case. As we leave, we trip up over a bloody but unbowed Hotspur, about to go on stage and die in Henry IV, Part 1. Falstaff is plumped in the corner and wishes us a courteous good night, while various make-up girls daub elderly knights. "It's like this every night at this time," says Tennant. "You can't move for men in armour and there's blood everywhere."

There is still no time for one quick drink in the Union Club. "I've got to get those lines fixed," he says, as he climbs into his car. He pushes a taped version of Romeo and Juliet - in which he plays Mercutio and Joseph Fiennes is Romeo - into the recorder. "It'll help me with learning my lines and, hopefully, Joe might have come up with something new that I can nick for my performance." And he drives off into the Warwickshire night.

Romeo and Juliet runs until October 7, in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. The Comedy of Errors runs until October 6 and The Rivals is in the Swan Theatre until October 7. "



 

Wednesday 13 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Wednesday 13th June 2012







The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a MP3 of David Tennant singing from Kafka The Musical.

Click here to listen to it (the recording originally came from Front Row on 6th April 2011).


  
 

Tuesday 12 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Tuesday 12th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is David Tennant's interview for Under The Radar magazine in October 2009.



 

Monday 11 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Monday 11th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a look at The iDent Gallery.

This website has a section about the Doctor Who Christmas 2009 David Tennant idents which includes photos and videos plus David Tennant's voiceover into his final episode of Doctor Who. The voiceover was only broadcast on the original transmission of the episode so it is a rare find!






Sunday 10 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Sunday 10th June 2012




The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a David Tennant and Catherine Tate interview from Front Row which was broadcast on BBC Radio Four at 7.15pm on Thursday 19th May 2011.

David and Catherine were interviewed by Mark Lawson from David's dressing room at the Wyndham Theatre a couple of hours before they were due to go on stage.

Click here to listen to the interview which was considerably longer than the usual 2-3 minutes length of Front Row interviews.



 

Saturday 9 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Saturday 9th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is just a random photo of David Tennant.

However it has proved to be a very popular photo whenever we have used it before!

As usual, click the photo for a larger version.



Friday 8 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Friday 8th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is an article in a Scottish newspaper (with quotes mainly taken from his SFX interview) from 2006 where David was asked why he did not use a Scottish accent in Doctor Who.

Click here to read the article.


Thursday 7 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Thursday 7th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is an audio-clip which has been posted onto Twitter today about a fan who met David Tennant outside the theatre in London last night.

The recording is a narrative about the meeting and not David actually talking but the link has a photo of David.


(The photo above was not from last night.)

 





Wednesday 6 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Wednesday 6th June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is the new photo of David Tennant which we posted earlier from the G2 section of today's Guardian.

David Tennant is pictured here with writer Dominic Savage on the set of True Love.

As usual, click the picture for a larger version.







Tuesday 5 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Tuesday 5th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a great story of a fan meeting David Tennant on 22nd May while he was filming The Spies Of Warsaw in Poland. We posted it at the time but it's always good to read again!


  




Monday 4 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Monday 4th June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a MP3 of the third part of the BBC Radio Four play The Rotters' Club which was broadcast in 2003.

David Tennant played Bill Anderton / Fudge in the four part drama which was described as "Jonathan Coe's touching tale of musical, political and sexual passion in 1970s Birmingham. The Rotters Club is for anyone who ever experienced adolescence the hard way."









Sunday 3 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Sunday 3rd June 2012



The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is an interview with David Tennant from around the time when he was promoting Single Father (October 2010).


It's funny to read about how competitive he was at bowling (against the children)!




Saturday 2 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Saturday 2nd June 2012

The David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a video interview which we used a couple of weeks ago as a prize after a David Tennant Quiz.

It's David's interview on BBC Breakfast to promote the Doctor Who episode Planet Of The Dead.

Do you remember those days when periodically David would appear on television to promote the episodes?









Friday 1 June 2012

David Tennant Treat 4 Today for Friday 1st June 2012



As it was a year ago tonight that David Tennant and Catherine Tate played the Press Night of Much Ado About Nothing, the David Tennant Treat 4 Today is a look at the great reviews they (and David in particular) received for the production.

Click here for links to 33 reviews of the play but this link is to What'sOnStage's 3 star review. That website described it as "the theatrical event of the year." About David Tennant they wrote "The masses will come to see Tennant and he's certainly worth it" and "Tennant is a Benedick to be cherished."