Matt Smith--The Biography

by Emily Herbert

  The few viewers it did get were on the whole very enthusiastic about it. Indeed, there was a good deal of online debate about why it hadn’t taken off more than it did. That previously mentioned lacklustre behaviour on the part of the BBC seemed to have something to do with it: the channel had just never really got behind the new show enough to make it work.

  ‘It’s really bizarre…why would BBC commission a series, and then not bother to promote it?’ was one typical blog, from Mayogirl on Digitalspy. ‘Where’s the sense in that? Actually, what the Beeb did here, was even worse than that – they put it on against their own fairly popular drama on BBC1 (New Street Law) and also on a night when there was lots of Champions League football, Carling Cup semi-final, Jamie Oliver etc etc … its opening rating was 1.3 million, and at its peak, episode 7, it reached 1.4 million. It was on too early, and on BBC2, and basically the towel was thrown in by episode 2 in terms of promotion. At 8 episodes, there wasn’t an awful lot of time for people to get attuned to it, especially as there was a fair bit of setting the scene, and introducing the characters in the first two episodes It’s a terrible pity, because it really was that good … very well written, acting – absolutely top drawer (I have no doubt that all of these young actors will go on to good things). brilliant soundtrack, beautifully shot … everything about this programme was class. It took some heavy criticism after the first couple of episodes, but I think most of the critics were won over in the end.’

  Even though the series did not make a big splash with the viewers, it still promised great things for all involved, however, and a year later, when it was confirmed that another series was not to be commissioned, the talented young cast were all assured they had big futures. ‘Scott, Danny, Ashika and Kirsty were the young political researchers grappling with messy personal lives in last year’s drama Party Animals,’ said the Observer. ‘The BBC2 series developed a cult following but never drew more than a million viewers and was not re-commissioned. But if it did not prove the hit BBC executives had hoped, it gave the actors a platform for success. Here’s how its cast of relative unknowns went from Westminster lackeys to West End and television stars.’ And so a round-up ensued, including Matt, although there was no mention of the Doctor or the Tardis. That was, as yet, still very much in the future.

  And that was all very much the highlights of Matt’s career until the Doctor showed up, as he was shortly to do. He was making a big name for himself, proving popular with his peers and was on the cusp of getting the role that would turn him into a household name. It was 2008, David Tennant was beginning to think beyond the confines of the Tardis and Matt was shortly to land the biggest role of his career.

  But he wasn’t the only one about to stage a huge breakthrough. The Doctor had to have a companion, and in order for it to work, there had to be a huge amount of chemistry between the Doctor and that companion. So just who was the next Doctor’s assistant to be?

  CHAPTER 10

  WHO’S THAT GIRL?

  Nothing could match the furore surrounding the search for a new Doctor Who. But there is also always a great deal of interest in the Doctor’s assistant, almost invariably an attractive young woman whose role has been that of helpmeet, admirer and, if truth be told, someone for the fathers to ogle at when the family watches the show. While they have never been passive, the Doctor’s assistants did often appear to be there in order to be rescued by the Doctor in the earlier manifestations of the show – but these days they are showing themselves to be adventurers in their own right.

  The prototype for the new style of assistant was, of course, Rose Tyler, so memorably played by Billie Piper, who set the bar very high for her successors. And none of them in the days of David Tennant – with the possible exception of Bernard Cribbins, who was also a companion of sorts – quite made the impact she did. But when it was the turn of the Eleventh Doctor to enter the Tardis, the show’s producers wanted to make sure they got a memorable assistant who was more than a match for the Doctor.

  And so it was to prove. The Eleventh Doctor’s assistant, Amy Pond, was popular right from the start. Introduced as a little girl, the first to see the Doctor’s latest incarnation, and transformed shortly afterwards into a young woman, Amy is played by Karen Gillan. She sounded quite as overwhelmed as Matt when she, too, discovered she would be travelling in time and space: ‘I am absolutely over the moon,’ she said. ‘The show is such a massive phenomenon that I can’t quite believe I’m going to be a part of it.’ A controversial part, too – Karen’s legs were long, and her skirts were going to be short. Her profession was as a kissogram, the first ever in that interesting line of work to take the worries of the universe, along with the Doctor, on her shoulders. But these were enlightened times.

  Everyone who becomes involved in Doctor Who sounds a little overwhelmed when talking about it – even Christopher Eccleston – and Karen was no exception. As with Matt, initial negotiations had been cloaked in secrecy, so much so that it was almost a surprise to learn that Karen herself knew she was up for the role. Not that she had been told a great deal more. ‘I knew that the audition was for the part of the Companion, but I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about it,’ she said. ‘They even had a code name for the role because it was so top secret. The code name was “Panic Moon”, an anagram of Companion, which I thought was really clever. It was one of the strangest experiences ever; it was a really weird feeling. I found out on the day of my second audition with Matt [Smith], so at least I didn’t have a really long wait. It just didn’t feel real, and I couldn’t believe it!’ It was, however, to be quite a while before she could tell anyone else her news.

  When the announcement did come out, Amy was given a hearty endorsement by the people who mattered. Steven Moffat was delighted that she was on board. ‘We saw some amazing actresses for this part, but when Karen came through the door the game was up,’ he said. ‘Funny, and clever, and gorgeous, and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it. A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too.’ That was something of an understatement. Most of the Doctor’s assistants ended up as pinups – Tardis totty, if you like – but Amy was to become an out-and-out sex symbol, acquiring an army of fans in her own right.

  The trick of having two Amys, the much younger one, and the 20-something to introduce viewers to the new Doctor, brought about another happy coincidence. The infant Amy was played by Karen’s cousin Caitlin Blackwood, also an actress with quite a future ahead. But although they were cousins, they had never actually met before the episode was filmed. ‘Caitlin was born and grew up in Northern Ireland and Karen grew up in Scotland,’ said Caitlin’s mother Linda. ‘So they actually only met for the first time at the read-through on set. It was an emotional moment. People kept commenting that they were so alike.’

  Caitlin herself was thrilled with the experience. ‘It was scary seeing myself up on the screen for the first time,’ she said. ‘I loved getting to know Karen and chatting with her. I got to meet some Daleks and went inside the Tardis too.’

  But despite the relationship, there were no favours. Karen related that Caitlin had had to go through the audition process just like everyone else, and that she, Karen, had had nothing to do with Caitlin’s selection. But she, too, was delighted by the choice of the actress to play little Amy. ‘We didn’t have many scenes together, but we saw each other around set, and that was nice,’ she said.

  And so who is the lithe redhead, who gives the Doctor as good as he gets and has so intrigued male fans of the show? Karen is a Scottish actress, born 28 November 1987 in Inverness. Certainly, nothing in her background hinted at the glories that were to lie ahead. Karen’s father, Raymond John, was a Day Centre Manager, her mother, Marie, a housewife. She was as little known as Matt when she was appointed to the role, something the producers clearly wanted to use to their advantage: since both were a totally unknown quantity, no one had the faintest idea what to expect, a fac
t that helped both of them to come to terms with what was happening to them. Both were getting drawn into the Doctor Who frenzy: as soon as it was announced that they had got the two plum roles, there was intensive speculation as to how they’d carry it off, to say nothing of how they were going to play the part. It isn’t easy even for seasoned performers to cope with the attention that goes with such a high-profile show, but to go from total unknown to player in one of the biggest cultural phenomena in the country, is a challenge. Total unknown to immersion in the full glare of publicity. That’s quite a leap for anyone to have to make.

  ‘That’s one of the lovely things about working with Matt because we are going through this crazy experience together,’ said Karen in an interview after filming had begun. ‘I’m sure it would be very different if he was already an established Doctor and then I came into it, but it’s just so nice to share this journey with someone who’s going through the same thing as you. It’s really exciting times because there’s a whole new turnover in a way, so it’s new and exciting and fresh. Having worked with him for the last nine months, I find it weird to think that anyone else played the Doctor. He’s completely taken on the role and made it his own.’

  Matt himself had been effusive about Karen, calling her beautiful and talented. She went on to repay the compliment in full. The producers had seen that he had that crucial certain something to take on the role, and Karen testified to it, as well. For all his youth, he somehow managed to exude the wisdom of centuries. And although he was actually only a few years older than Karen, it was quite possible for the viewer to believe that a few centuries separated them, too. Karen certainly saw that he had the character and magnetism to make something of the role. ‘You know what? When Matt walks into a room, you know that he’s there,’ she said. ‘He’s got that aura about him and that’s what makes him so brilliant at playing the Doctor because his Doctor is a force of nature. He’s very eccentric and playful and funny and we have a great time together filming.’ This was a very big clue as to how his Doctor was going to come across on screen, too.

  Karen’s appointment also maintained the Scottish link with the show. David Tennant had been a Scot, but he had played the role as English (Russell T Davies had been heard to comment that he wasn’t going to turn Doctor Who into a tour of provincial accents), whereas Karen was very much going to stick to her roots. ‘She will be Scottish, yes,’ she said. ‘In my first audition, I did it in an English accent and in my own accent. It was up in the air in the beginning, but then we decided to go with my own accent, which is nice.’

  It was a huge break at a young age, but something Karen had been striving for, for most of her life. Karen knew she wanted to try her hand as an actress from very early on. When she was 16, she enrolled at Edinburgh’s Telford College; after that she moved on to the prestigious Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London to take a BA (Hons) acting degree. But she had had a normal childhood, just like anyone else. ‘I got teased for being a redhead when I was younger, which is strange because I’m Scottish and there are loads of us – we should unite forces!’ she said. ‘I love my red hair. When I was 15, I dyed half my hair pink, inspired by the “Bootylicious” video. My parents went mental! I had it for a good few months – I kept re-dyeing it, because I thought it looked really cool. That’s my biggest fashion faux pas to date…’

  She was lucky. Had there been other such sartorial mistakes, they would almost certainly have turned up. As it was, however, Karen had the face and body of a model, which she had indeed been in the past, and so after the Doctor Who announcement was made, she posed in various photo shoots looking extremely glamorous. The fathers were clearly in for a treat. Karen’s comments about her hair were apposite. Indeed, the BBC was no doubt delighted in having a red-haired assistant on board the Tardis. When Matt Smith first regenerated, and was attempting to come to terms with his new appearance, he commented, ‘I’m still not ginger,’ eliciting complaints from 143 viewers. One mother in particular was livid: ‘I think it is totally inappropriate for the Doctor to make fun of people with ginger hair,’ she snapped. ‘It is a programme children watch, and I think it will encourage bullying.’ Now, at least, the Beeb could point out that there was, in fact, a ginger inhabitant of the Tardis. ‘We’ve received complaints from viewers who believed a line in Doctor Who: The End of Time was insulting to people with ginger hair,’ said a spokesperson. ‘We would like to reassure viewers that Doctor Who doesn’t have an anti-ginger agenda whatsoever. This was a reprise of the line in the “Christmas Invasion” episode in 2005, when David Tennant discovers that he’s not ginger, and here he is, missing out again – disappointed he’s still not ginger.’

  Well, Karen was, and proud of it. Nor was it exactly holding her back. Upon leaving the Italia Conti Academy, she had started to get some acting experience, too. Karen had appeared in an episode of Rebus, ‘A Question Of Blood’, in 2006, playing a character called Terry Cotter, and in the television hospital drama Harley Street. She was also part of the ensemble cast in The Kevin Bishop Show, a comedy sketch series, in which she did impersonations of celebrities such as Katy Perry and Angelina Jolie, as well as playing very many different characters. It was the television equivalent of repertory theatre: a very good training in that you had to learn to play lots of different parts.

  However, after that initial burst, work dried up, and for a time, at least, it seemed as though her acting career might be at an end. As is so often the way with setbacks, this was ultimately to work to her advantage – and there can be few members of the acting profession who haven’t had their fair share of times when they were ‘resting’ – but it was very difficult to cope with at the time. By now based in London, Amy went to work in The Pilgrim pub in London’s Kennington, not at all the future she had been planning for herself. ‘It was depressing, not working for so long,’ she said. ‘I hated not being involved in acting, but looking back on it, I’m pleased it happened. Otherwise I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have a normal job.’

  What rescued her was not acting, but modelling – at 5ft 11, she was the right height, and as Doctor Who fans were to discover, had very long legs that were perfect for a spell on the catwalk. First Karen was approached to be a model for Allegra Hicks during the 2007 London Fashion Week for the autumn/winter catwalk show. She then worked as a model for the launch party of Nicola Roberts’ (from girl band Girls Aloud) Dainty Doll make-up range; this was, in fact, caught on film in the course of Nicola’s episode of the documentary The Passions of Girls Aloud. Had her acting career not been suddenly resurrected, there’s every chance she would have made it as a successful model instead.

  However, Doctor Who came up and it very soon became obvious that Karen was the woman for the role. ‘Then I got the recall, the second audition,’ she told one interviewer. ‘That was when I started sweating. This huge thing. And it was so secretive I couldn’t even tell BBC reception where I was going. I had to pretend it was for something called Panic Moon.’ It later turned out that she was actually the last actress to audition for the role – although it was clear she was the correct choice right from the start.

  In some ways, Karen was more Christopher Eccleston than Matt Smith when it came to the part, in that she had not been a diehard fan of Doctor Who. But she was well aware how important it was in terms of popular culture. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t really a huge follower of Doctor Who before I got this part,’ she said. ‘I mean I knew it was huge, but … I was nothing like my mum, who’s a proper diehard Whovian. She’s got a Tardis moneybag, and Dalek bubble-bath. But having read the first episode I was utterly smitten, and with the character. Amy’s a sassy lady, funny and passionate, and her relationship with the doctor has a really interesting dynamic.’

  It was known from the start that the Doctor and Amy were to share a kiss: did this imply they were in love? Karen had very much her own take on it all. ‘She has a love for him, a really deep love for him,’ she said. ‘But not romantic. It’s been
an education in itself to work with Matt, who’s so endlessly inventive, bringing something new to it every day rather than falling into the easy default scared face. That’s one of the challenges; you’re faced with life-threatening situations every episode, but you can’t just widen your eyes all the time. Yes, this doctor is preeeetty good.’

  And then there was the matter of the wardrobe, on which Amy had also had some input. Having done some modelling, she was well aware of the impact of appearance, and those very short skirts were in part down to her. ‘She [Amy] gets to wear all these small skirts, which I will admit was very cold, but also very cool,’ she said. ‘They originally wanted to put me in trousers, but I did say I’d like to wear a skirt because – you’ll understand when you watch it. Actually I think I love Amy. I’m in love with her. I want to be her.’

  And so Amy began to prepare for the challenges ahead. It was a challenge, too. Matt might have been taking on the central role, but it was vitally important to get the chemistry right between him and his assistant, on top of which, Amy had to be able to compare well to her predecessors. It was not going to be an easy task.

  Karen knew it, too. ‘It’s a pretty terrifying role, but a huge privilege to be part of an iconic show,’ she said, sounding very much like her new co-star. ‘I’m following a long line of great actresses who have played the companion, so it’s quite daunting. I’d love to sit down with them and have a good chat about it.’ Karen, like Matt, knew that there was a long journey ahead.

  CHAPTER 11