BAFTA FILM SPECIAL THE HOST
David Tennant looks forward to his latest role as host of the Baftas – and reflects on the time when he tried to launch his film career in LA
The Bafta Film Awards Sunday 7.00pm BBC1
HERE HE COMES: all rugged stubble and dashing smile, wearing a pair of bright pink boots. A handshake. A sit-down. A make-up artist realising that this is a print interview so their services will not be required. “Maybe I should get it done anyway,” David Tennant says, laughing. “I should always look my best.”
At least three women I know, including my own mother, asked me to give “David” their “regards” when they found out I was interviewing him. You can understand why. He is, after all, the nation’s treasure, the actor’s actor, the Doctor’s Doctor. Most pressing of all, however, he is the host of this year’s Bafta Film Awards. It’s relatively new territory for him, so is he feeling nervous at all?
“Right now, a month out, it feels like a bit of a thrill and a lark,” he says, grinning. “An extraordinary opportunity to do something very unusual and exciting.” Surely there is also a little bit of pressure? This is the biggest night in British film – the room will be full of Hollywood A-listers, the eyes of the world will be on him. He thinks for a moment... “People keep asking me how nervous I am, how I’m preparing for it and so on, and that’s beginning to make me nervous.”
He will be fine, of course. Anyone who has tuned into Comic Relief these past few years knows how at ease Tennant is in presenting mode, how effortlessly charming and charismatic he can be reading from an autocue. Is he considering doing less acting and more presenting in future? “No,” he says. “That is why I feel liberated by this. I feel like I have – whisper it – nothing to lose! Because I’m just going to go back to the normal job the next day. I’m not looking to make this a stepping stone to presenting my own chat show!”
Maybe so. Yet 52-year-old Tennant’s recent career has reflected an actor growing more comfortable with playing himself. As well as presenting Comic Relief, there’s the podcast David Tennant Does a Podcast with… where he interviews former co-stars like Michael Sheen, Olivia Colman, Sir Ian McKellen and Whoopi Goldberg, and also his lockdown sitcom Staged, in which he played an egotistical caricature of himself.
Many actors are reluctant to be themselves; they take refuge in the distance of performance. For Tennant, it’s something that he feels “a little bit more relaxed” about than he used to. “The more I’ve done in my normal job, the less risky it feels,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s ever yourself anyway. It’s a version of you that is closer to you as a human, but it’s not the same person who’d be sitting at home watching the Bafta
