Matt Smith--The Biography

by Emily Herbert

  For all the hints that the two find each other attractive on some level, however, everyone involved realised that it would destroy the dramatic tension if the Doctor and Amy really did become an item. Matt certainly thought so. ‘There is always room for romance in Doctor Who but to be honest, the idea of the companion and the Doctor getting together is a bit of a tired story by now,’ he said. ‘There is only so far it can go. What happens? So, they get together, travel around the universe, end of story? There has to be more to it than that. It has to be about adventure, magic and exploration. Those are the things we’re interested in this season, really.’

  There was another reason the Doctor couldn’t find love – he simply didn’t have the time. ‘It’s because he’s too busy,’ he said. ‘He finds humans fascinating but imagine if you’d travelled round for 900-plus years on your own with this great weight behind you. He’s an addict – if he stopped saving the world he’d be in real trouble.’ He was also ‘an intergalactic genius, a superhero-ish mad, fumbling, bumbling, science geek.’

  In truth, though, both Matt and Karen couldn’t help teasing us about what had gone on between their two characters. There had been that kiss in Amy’s bedroom – ‘Matt is a superb kisser,’ said Karen innocently. ‘We had to do quite a few takes and there was quite a bit of giggling. Thankfully the kissing scene wasn’t the first scene we had to do because that would have been weird. We were well into the run of the series when it came up so we’d gotten to know one another really well.’

  ‘Those luscious lips!’ said Matt, not to be outdone. ‘I’d rate her a nine, stroke 10, for kissing. How can anyone not love Kaz?’

  Despite his own protestations, however, it really didn’t look as if he was going to be single for long. Fans were throwing themselves at him and he had suddenly become a very interesting proposition for the type of woman who wanted to go out with the hottest new woman on the scene. Matt didn’t seem to have trouble attracting girlfriends, but even if he had, his new status meant that there would be girls who wanted to be with him queuing up round the block. He might not have quite made it to David Tennant-style heartthrob status (yet), but there was no question that he now had the pick of the bunch.

  And for all Matt’s protestations that he was wedded to his work and that the Doctor was a far more important figure in his life than any woman could be, it soon became apparent that it was just conceivably possible that he might have got his eye on someone after all. If truth be told, it would have been strange if he had not. Matt was a healthy, red-blooded young man, who had just come out of a relationship with a very beautiful Brazilian woman, and he was almost bound to be looking for someone else.

  In fact, initially the story came out as just a hint. A journalist asked him if he was still seeing Mayana: ‘No, no, no, no,’ was the reply. In that case, what exactly was Matt looking for in a woman? ‘Oh gosh! Daisy Lowe is taken, so that’s out of the question. Ha ha! … She’s a pretty lady … Oh, I don’t know. Someone lovely with a good heart who enjoys the things I enjoy … who plays the guitar.’

  Daisy Lowe was indeed taken, but matters change all the time, especially when you are very young and it involves affairs of the heart. And so it was that at around the time that Matt’s first Doctor Who series started airing, he found himself with a new, very high-profile girlfriend. Was it love? Would it last? Who, exactly, was this Daisy Lowe who had won his heart?

  CHAPTER 13

  FRESH AS A DAISY

  Daisy Lowe is second generation show business. Born on 27 January 1989, her mother is Pearl Lowe, who was a singer/songwriter and who now works as a textile and fashion designer, and her father is Gavin Rossdale, frontman for the band Bush. Daisy’s parents did not live together: she was born when her mother was just 19, and Pearl has actually lived with Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, to whom she is now married, since 1995. Pearl was also a friend of Kate Moss and a member of the notorious Primrose Hill set, although by the time Daisy met Matt, the family had long since settled into a quiet life in Hampshire, where the wildness of yesteryear was a thing of the past. That said, Daisy did not actually accompany them: she stayed with her grandparents in London to complete her schooling.

  Daisy’s career kicked off when she was pretty young: she started modelling at the age of two, and by her mid-teens was taking part in various photoshoots. At 15 she was signed up with the Select modelling agency and started appearing in some of the glossiest magazines in the world, among them Vogue, Tatler and Harper’s Bazaar. She also appeared on the catwalk for some of the world’s most famous designers, among them Chanel, Burberry and Vivienne Westwood. Her career, to put it mildly, was doing well.

  She also started DJing and getting into music – much like Matt’s previous girlfriend, in fact. However, her background was very unlike Matt’s normal, middle class oasis of stability. Pearl had been married before, to Bronner Lowe, and Daisy had grown up believing him to be her father. It was only when Daisy found out that neither Bronner nor Pearl had O-type blood that she demanded the truth and sought a paternity test via her lawyers, much to the reported angst of Gavin’s wife Gwen Stefani. And so Daisy found her real father. She was forced to grow up very fast.

  It was not difficult to see what Matt saw in Daisy. At almost exactly the moment that he came back on the dating scene again himself, Daisy took part in a very raunchy shot for Agent Provocateur, wearing nipple tassles and not a great deal else. Daisy herself was not available, however: she was dating Will Cameron. She was also based largely in New York. However, she came back to Britain frequently, and New York is not as far away as Rio de Janeiro. And so the seeds of romance were sown.

  It was not, however, until April 2010 that it became public that the two were an item. The couple were seen at the Coachella music festival in Los Angeles all over each other: if the relationship had ever been secret, the secret was well and truly out. ‘They couldn’t get enough of each other and Matt didn’t want to leave her side,’ said one observer. ‘Laughing and whispering into each other’s ears, they didn’t seem at all fazed by people watching them.’

  Matt was sought after from other quarters as well. Women were now routinely throwing themselves at him, not least because he was clearly on his way to becoming an A-list star. ‘His life is changing hugely all the time,’ said a friend.

  ‘Since the new Doctor Who series started on BBC1 last month, interest in him has gone through the roof. He used to be seen as a bit of a geek who wasn’t exactly fighting off babes. Now he’s got a hot girlfriend and other girls can’t keep their hands off him. It’s amazing to see how his life has changed.’

  There was another potential obstacle: Daisy’s mother Pearl. The two were extremely close, and Matt had yet to pass the Pearl test – although that was not always failsafe, as a previous boyfriend of Daisy’s, Mark Ronson, had found out. ‘I want Mum to approve,’ said Daisy. ‘I can’t be with them unless she approves of them…Yeah, she liked Mark too much and that freaked me out, so that’s maybe why that ended. She had me so young and there is such a small gap between us that she always treated me as an equal rather than as a child. I grew up thinking I was a little adult, Mum’s little mate.’

  Matt was beginning to reap the rewards of his success in more than just his love life: he had signed a three-year deal with the BBC worth £600,000 to play the Doctor and had just bought his first property, a £775,000 converted church in Highgate, north London. ‘It was a gamble to cast a relative unknown, but it’s paid off spectacularly,’ said a BBC insider. ‘And just like the Doctor, Matt is a quirky guy and didn’t want a run-of-the mill home, but something a bit different.’

  But Matt was really on a roll now. The previous year, David Tennant had dropped a very big hint to the effect that he might be making a reappearance in the Tardis on the show’s fiftieth anniversary in 2013, but added, apropos Matt, ‘He’s brilliant, which is annoying. There is no one who has worked with Matt in the UK who doesn’t rave about him.’ It was clear the rest of the
country was beginning to agree. Matt made the ‘Chart of Lust 2009’ in the Observer magazine: ‘The incoming Doctor Who is as fit as he is accomplished,’ it pronounced. ‘And he has well nice clothes, both in and out of character.’

  Matt and Karen were out on the promotional trail throughout much of the first half of 2010; as they were doing so, Doctor Who was voted the greatest screen ‘doctor’ of all time. ‘I think notions of sci-fi being geeky are outdated,’ said Dave Bradley, editor of SFX magazine. ‘Sci-fi in general, and Doctor Who in particular, are part of the mainstream now. Doctor Who has become the most popular non-soap drama on British TV, and words like Dalek are now in the dictionary. There’s a whole generation of people who aren’t afraid to openly love scifi, and I think Doctor Who has been part of that.’

  Matt single-handedly kick-started a new fashion for tweed; the geography teacher look (which he admittedly excelled at) was all the rage. ‘Originally I was going to have a black leather coat or a blue swashbuckling coat and possibly a hat too but, somewhere along the line, the idea got dropped,’ Matt confided. ‘I hope it’s revived in time for series two.’ But others thought it was high time that the Doctor was so well dressed: ‘The whole thing of being a proper gent over the last few years has been very big,’ said Daryoush Hal-Najafi, editor of vicestyle.com, a fashion website. ‘He looks stylish. They’ve gone back to their roots with the mad professor thing, with the bow-tie.’

  In fact, the addition of a coat was more than just a style decision. A lot of filming was done in the winter, and that tweed jacket, stylish as it was, was not enough to ward off the cold. ‘It’s been extremely cold shooting outdoor scenes for series one and I’m hoping the show’s producers extend the Doctor’s wardrobe for the next series – definitely to a coat and possibly a hat, as well!’ he said in another interview. ‘At one point, it looked as if he might wear a black leather coat – but, in the end – it was decided he would go without. It was a decision I was starting to regret when temperatures plummeted in December!’ Another detail emerged – the Daleks were shorter in this series. The programme makers liked their sink plunger to be directly on a level with the Doctor’s face, and at 5’10”, Matt was three inches shorter than David Tennant. And so the Daleks shrank.

  It had been very hard work. ‘If you’re ill, it’s tough,’ said Matt. ‘I think your head would have to be falling off before you could take a day off.’ As for the sonic screwdrivers – ‘I’ve broken four of them,’ said Matt. ‘I like to have it about my person at all times, just twirling it around and flicking it. It’s all part of the magic, isn’t it?’ Not always – Matt was stopped by security when trying to board a plane to Northern Ireland until he explained to the bemused security men who he was.

  The series debuted with 8.4 million viewers: Matt was deemed a triumph. In fact, so much was he a triumph, that another idea was put on the backburner: a Doctor Who film. Had it gone ahead, this had actually been planned with David Tennant in mind, not Matt Smith, but this set up a conflict of interest. ‘There was a lot of excitement over the idea but now there’s a general acceptance it isn’t going to happen soon,’ said a source. ‘David’s clearly in demand but there’s also a feeling it’d be unfair on Matt to have a rival Doctor in cinemas.’ And it was by no means certain which of them was the more popular now.

  There was a certain amount of shock in April, shortly after the new series began, when a memo from the BBC’s bosses who started the show came to light. Rather to everyone’s shock, the Doctor, played in 1966, was about to regenerate – and in the groovy Sixties take on the whole thing, was deemed to have a similar experience to taking drugs. ‘It is as if he has had the LSD drug and instead of experiencing the kicks, he has the hell and dank horror which can be its effect,’ the memo read. Not that there was anything of this about the clean living Matt: the Doctor had never been so fit, healthy and glad to be alive.

  Karen decided to adopt the same philosophy. She was greatly embarrassed when pictures of her emerged looking very much the worse for wear after a night out on the tiles: Karen laughed it off. ‘I think I am going to try and lay off falling out of nightclubs,’ she said. ‘It’s not a good look!’

  Karen, like Matt, was not going to complain. She was well aware of the opportunity that had been offered to both of them, and was as determined as he was to put it to good use. ‘I’m embracing being recognised because it means people are interested in the show and that can only be a good thing,’ she said in an interview after the show had started to air. ‘My plan is to be really nice all the time. Steven has created this fantastic girl. She is a warrior. She will throw herself straight into the fray, probably stupidly sometimes. There have been a few of those big moments already and there are lots more to come.’

  And the Matt Smith effect continued. It wasn’t just sales of tweed jackets that were shooting up; so, too, were bow ties, by 94 per cent. Radley Bags were branching into tweed: they ordered a special cloth to be made at Harris Tweed’s plant in Lewis.

  Doctor Who was also attracting comment from some pretty unexpected quarters. Terry Pratchett, of all people, the famous author of the Discworld novels (and a direct inspiration for The Beast Below) appeared to be lashing out at the show on surprising grounds: ‘It is very, very entertaining,’ he said in his role as guest editor of SFX magazine. ‘I just wish that it was not classified as science fiction. Who’s science is pixel-thin, ludicrous. Only people who don’t know what science fiction is say that Doctor Who is science fiction.’ It was surprising criticism, and hotly disputed. This was the most popular science fiction show on the box.

  It was a funny experience watching what was happening to Matt, for his friends and family as well as himself. Polly Stenham, the playwright who had caused such acclaim with That Face, was herself having to deal with the pressures of fame, but it was a breeze compared to Matt. ‘Very occasionally, I get recognised, but it’s not fame, which is something I’d hate anyway,’ she said. ‘Matt is one of my best friends, so it’s nothing compared to the absolute insane weirdness that he has. You can’t cross the street with him now without it being just crazy.’ But he was coping: he knew just how lucky he was.

  As the new series continued to garner praise, Stephen Fry stuck his oar in. Delivering the Bafta Annual Television Lecture in London, Fry criticised the ‘infantilism’ of British television, singling out Doctor Who. The programmes were, ‘like a chicken nugget. Every now and again we all like it…But if you are an adult you want something surprising, savoury, sharp, unusual, cosmopolitan, alien, challenging, complex, ambiguous, possibly even slightly disturbing and wrong. You want to try those things, because that’s what being adult means.’

  It was a surprising attack, not least because it had been no time at all since he’d been praising Matt on Twitter. Those with long memories recalled that Fry had penned an episode of Doctor Who in 2006 that had never actually been filmed; Steven Moffat, meanwhile, was not going to take this lying down. ‘It was designed as a family programme,’ he said. ‘It’s the junction between children’s programmes and adults’ programmes. It’s the one everybody sits and watches. So it is for adults, it is for children, it’s a rather brilliant idea – why don’t we make a television programme that everybody wants to watch, very, very specifically? [But] I love Stephen and Stephen loves Doctor Who.’

  Matt was coping admirably with the attention and the pressures that were coming his way, but even he felt the weight of the burden he was carrying upon those slim shoulders. Now that it was all in the can, he confessed to a severe bout of nerves in the first week of filming: ‘I rang my dad, and said, “I am in trouble”,’ he revealed. But to the great relief of many Who fans, his father talked him round.

  But there were benefits to his new life, too. Matt played opposite Alison Hammond on ITV’s This Morning in a table soccer match: he won, and received a signed Blackburn Rovers strip. For a man as football mad as Matt, that was quite something: ‘Thank you so much, and thank you Blackburn Rovers
,’ he said, clearly moved. ‘It’s the best.’

  And he got to do other things that the Doctor would clearly have considered to be cool. At Glastonbury, Orbital performed on the Other Stage, and got Matt Smith to join in for their version of the Doctor Who theme song, something that sent the crowds mad. Matt looked as if he was pretty happy, too. Indeed – everyone was a winner. And some were on the verge of becoming very rich indeed.

  Now that Matt had been firmly established as the Eleventh Doctor, a lot of people were very satisfied, because quite apart from all the kudos and the artistic achievement, it looked as if a lot of people were going to get very rich. Matt’s own £600,000 contract was very generous on most people’s standards, of course, and doing very well for a man still in his twenties, but it was hardly in the mega-million league that a bona fide Hollywood star could expect. However, according to industry experts pointed out that he would earn a lot more by way of ‘residuals’ – namely, the merchandise that bore his face. Some people believed that if he played his cards right, a small fortune could be heading his way – with the brand as a whole worth as much as £100 million.