"Don"t we all goal that we could be the Doctor, somewhere?" Matt Smith says. Photograph: Frederike Helwig
Welcome aboard, says the new Doctor, shutting the doorway on the outward world. It"s a cold, floating day at Doctor Who HQ in Cardiff. I"d been anticipating for the Tardis, but we have do with his trailer.
The heater is floating out prohibited air, and photos and postcards are waving on the wall. There"s a design of a cat, a partner you do a moony, great fitness messages. The trailer has spin home for Matt Smith whilst he"s been filming his initial Doctor Who series.
He already feels he"s finished his share of time travelling. Friends, strangers, destiny fans ask him what it"s going to be identical to when he"s the Doctor, and to answer he has to do a stand in take – take a outing behind to the future. As far as he"s endangered he"s been bustling Doctoring for the last 7 months, but of march we"re nonetheless to see the fruits of his labour.
The proclamation that Smith was to take over from David Tennant as the Doctor was greeted by the republic with a outrageous common subject mark. Matt Smith, who he? After all, names such as James Nesbitt and David Morrissey were pronounced to be in the running. There had additionally been hints that the BBC was scheming for the initial black Doctor (Paterson Joseph, who played Rodrick in the series) or the initial womanlike (former partner Billie Piper).
It"s frequency startling that the ostensible shortlist was high profile. Doctor Who is the greatest time-travel array in the galaxy. It"s the longest-running sci-fi show on television, sole to 54 countries, and some-more than 3 million Doctor Who DVDs have been sold. Previous incumbents have enclosed long-scarved fable Tom Baker and white-haired fine Jon Pertwee. To have counts worse for Smith, Tennant had usually been voted the greatest ever Doctor.
Matt who?
Today he"s wearing braces and a crawl tie, that have his baby face even some-more incongruous. After all, so majority Doctors were prime at slightest (even a small wizened in the box of William Hartnell) – and, so we thought, they should be if they were single-handedly going to save the universe from Daleks, Reapers, Cybermen, the Slitheen, the Sycorax, the Abzorbaloff, the Master, the Adipose and the peculiar werewolf.
Smith looks a great decade off shaving, his mettle is worryingly white and he"s beansprout thin. His quiff juts out from his high front identical to an suspended cliff. He"s got a hold of the rock-star-from-outer-space about him. "This is my cat Timmy who"s no longer with us," he says, giving a guided debate of his trailer walls. "My partner Timmy. I can"t discuss it you, man, I luuuuurved that cat. He got to 18. He had a unequivocally great innings, that"s since I was so trustworthy to him. He was called the godfather of the travel since he was a bigggggg cat. I"m all going to have a Mini Egg, if that"s all right." He digs in to my parcel and munches away. "Ah, it"s identical to sky in your mouth."
Words pour out from him, acrobatics over each alternative in the competition from brain to mouth. He"s buoyant and witty – the sort of hyperactive puppy you find presenting children"s TV shows on Saturday mornings. Yet at the same time there"s somethingabout him that"s comparison than his years. His wording is a reversion to Enid Blyton"s lashings of ginger beer: the Ken Loach movie Looking For Eric is a "belter" that "warms the cockles", "gosh" is his prime expletive, he doesn"t swear.
When David Tennant voiced he was stepping down, Smith"s silent referred to he"d have agood Doctor. Why? "Well, I used to have a unequivocally stripy headband at university and people would contend it"svery Doctor Who!" Is that all? He ums and aahs, and says there competence be something else. "Iguess I"ve regularly hoped… There"s something ungodly or wreckless or insane or brilliant. Don"twe all goal that we could be the Doctor, somewhere? Isn"t that what creates him great?"
Actually, Smith didn"t creatively goal he could be the Doctor. He hoped – rather, insincere – he would be a footballer. He grew up in Northampton, went to a great internal delegate that had before been a abbreviation school, did as majority work as was required to see him by his exams, and played football. Every day, each evening, he played. He was good, too. Signed on at girl spin with Northampton Town, afterwards Nottingham Forest and Leicester City. His father had been a decent centre-back, and his grandfather had played as a striker for Notts County. There was usually one thing he was ever going to be: a first-class centre-back.
Then, at 16, he got a behind injury. For a year his father, who runs a plastics business, gathering him from Northampton to Leicester each day for treatment. Eventually, he returned to action. Butit wasn"t the same – the pace, certainty and craving had gone. Leicester City expelled him. "Icould have sealed for a reduce joining bar but itwas a risk, and the last integrate of games I didn"t wish to play, I dreaded it. I"d lost that desire, the urge, the enjoyment, all the things you need in life. Imean, what"s the point in you do something you don"t enjoy?"
He creates it receptive to recommendation identical to an easy preference now, but it wasn"t. "I was articulate to my father about ittheother day. It"s the one time… Yes, I was in amess. Football was everything. You think it"s the one thing you do in your life, your total focus…" Fora nanosecond he sounds roughly downbeat. "But it"s identical to anything… it"s not the disappointment, it"s how you conflict to it." And how did he react? "I went to do my A-levels and proposed you do drama. I"m all going to have an additional Mini Egg, if that"s all right."
His play teacher, Mr Hardingham, nurtured Smith. When he didn"t spin up for rehearsal, he gave him a second chance. "Like great teachers do, they shift your life. He got me forms for the National Youth Theatre. And I didn"t fill them in." Mr Hardingham persisted. Eventually Smith did fill in the forms, won a place, went on to investigate play and pleasing essay at the University of East Anglia and detected that behaving gave him a identical hum to football. "There are great disciplines from being a diver that you can send in to being an artist. The preparation, the sacrifice, the consistent enterprise to improve."
Smith looks at me. He notices the persperate pouring from my face. It"s hot in the trailer. "Oh God, I"m so sorry, you should have said." He jumps up, turns the feverishness down, pops a Mini Egg in to his mouth, sits down and looks out of the window. He points to the beside trailer that belongs to the Doctor"s new assistant, played by Karen Gillan. "She"s really beautiful, insane as a box of cats." He stops. "In a shining way… We"re both flattering mad, I think, that is since it"s cool."
Does he whim her? "Me, Matt Smith, or the Doctor?" The Doctor? "Well, you"ll have to see, won"t you?" And Matt Smith? "Noooh!" he protests. "She"s my mate, Kaz, I usually take the mick out of her each day." It"s not really gentlemanly to contend you don"t whim her, I say. "No, listen, she"s a pleasing woman, you know, but we work together – that would be an error. That would be an error!"
Has he regularly been renouned with girls? "I identical to to think so." Last year it was reported that he was going out with Brazilian thespian Mayana Moura. Are they still together? "No, no, no, no," he says in a rush. Smith is singular again. What is he seeking for in the preferred woman? "Oh gosh! Daisy Lowe is taken, so that"s out of the question. Haha!" Who"sshe? "She"s a flattering lady… Oh, I don"t know. Someone poetic with a great heart who enjoys the things I enjoy… who plays the guitar."
He talks about how difficult the work is, and the hours they have to put in. "By the end, we"ll be filming from 11pm compartment 9 in the morning… afterwards they need to fire in the mornings since of the light. D"you know what? It is exhausting. We"ve been sharpened for 7 and a half months now, and the line-learning is utterly measureless for the Doctor since he"s in flattering majority each scene, and he says the infancy of things since his brain is the coolest and the biggest." After filming, he does a integrate of hours a night of revision, guidance his lines. Is it worse than school? "No, since you"re the Doctor, so the payoff"s greater. It"s not identical to three times maths with Mr Humzinger. There"s not that majority coffee breath."
When he got the job, he had to keep it secret. He"d lay examination Doctor Who with his flatmate, unfortunate to discuss it him he was the new Time Lord and carrying to keep schtum. "It was a finish nightmare." Eventually he told his father. "He was rather flabbergasted. When I told him, he laughed. He was excited, ecstatic and really proud."
It"s such a bizarre time in his life. A year ago, he was flattering majority different – fans of the radio array Party Animals, in that he played a parliamentary researcher, or those who had seen him at the Royal Court in That Face, personification the carer son of Lindsay Duncan"s alcoholic mother, competence have been means to put a name to the face, but he frequency had a mass following. At Christmas, he done his initial (and so far only) coming as the Doctor, when David Tennant renewed in to him. Today, he can usually about get afar with on foot around unbothered. In a integrate of weeks, he will be a star, one of the majority recognizable actors in the country. "There aren"t majority jobs that shift the fabric of your hold up in the same proceed – where you go from being a operative actress who is flattering anonymous, to being bearing in to what is one of the majority renouned shows, if not the majority popular, in Britain."
Is he nervous? Look, he says, it"s his job, he"s receiving it all in his stride. Then he stops. Of march he"s nervous. "It"s distinct any pursuit I"ll ever do since a) there"s so majority that comes with it, b)there"s so majority that is expected. I"d be lying if Isaid the initial day I walked on the beach, where we filmed, and I saw the Tardis, and there were all these paparazzi there, and you"re going, what the ruin is going on…?" In his pour out to get the difference out, he mostly forgets to finish sentences.
Has he sought the recommendation of former Doctors? He tells me he not prolonged ago had lunch with Peter Davison, who told him simply to suffer the ride. He additionally had a word with David Tennant. "Ispoke quickly to David. He was usually really poetic and gave me encouragement, but I think you have to stick it out yourself. It"s your own journey."
Surely it creates it that bit tougher when he"s following the majority renouned Doctor ever. "Yeah, yeah. I theory you"ve got to proceed it with your own take or spin. No, spin is the wrong word. Identity. How can you not be wakeful of the abounding birthright and legacy? Over Yuletide it was everywhere. It was the big thing, David withdrawal the show. But it usually intimidates you as majority as you concede it to."
I discuss it him about my 10-year-old crony Joseph. Joseph cried when Tennant left. More to the point, he cried when he saw Smith for the initial time. I feel meant referring to it, but maybe it"s a magnitude of Smith"s task, to win over the fans. He looks a small crestfallen. Then there are the bloggers, angry that, at 27, he is as well young, as well majority identical to an emo stone star, as well pretty, as well ugly, as well everything. "Thanks for reminding me." How can he put them at ease? "What is my repartee to them? Thank you for your kind and deliberate comments… hehehehe. Everybody"s entitled to an opinion. But an emo? Maybe it"s my hair."
Back to Joseph. He wants to know how Smith is going to have the Doctor his own.
"He"s a small reckless. He"ll travel in to a room and have a million things to do. And, as against to meaningful only how to get out, he"ll take it up to the precipice: don"t know, don"t know, don"t know, and boom, there"s the idea. And it"s a bit insane and reckless. It"s really doof, doof, doof. And he"s got a messenger who I think is the hardest to handle. And she"s utterly mad. But the Doctor"s utterly insane as well. So together…"
Is he going to be one of those unhappy doctors identical to Christopher Eccleston, weighed down by his dire history? "I think it"s unfit to shun that with the Doctor. He"s lost so majority people and ravaged so much… bad or good, he"s brought total empires down. He"s seen a lot, and that"s piece of his personality. But that"s additionally what gives him such happiness and effervescence."
As he talks I notice a prolonged injure utilizing down his forehead. Is it the outcome of a football injury? "No, I burst that open as a child at nursery, and had to have twenty-four stitches. Can you see where it goes back? You can flay my hair behind if you want." So I do, and discuss it him this is not the initial actress I"ve got insinuate with – I once pulled a hair out of Daniel Day-Lewis"s ear. He looks impressed. "Really? He"s a genius. I"m carrying an additional Mini Egg. What an actor! That"s what we"re all aiming for. To spin in pieces and bobs identical to that!"
Apart from the football blip, you clarity Matt Smith is used to achieving the goals he sets himself. At school, he motionless he longed for to be head boy, and won the election. "I was the outward choice. I curried foster between friends. Ijust longed for the mantle." Really? "Yeah, course, man. I longed for to run things. I longed for control. Itwas the top position, and I longed for the top position. Why not? Then you get to organize the round and you get to contend if you have ayear book and each Tuesday you go out for ameeting for dual hours and get out of three times maths. There was a big hoo-ha with a partner called Dean, since he thought I was utilizing sly strategy to get votes." But get the votes he did.
Whereas prior head boys were straight-A students who had left on to Cambridge University, Smith was not a swot. But even when stressing his averageness, he ends up divulgence some-more about his determination. "I got an A, B and C. Ain Drama. B in Psychology." He bangs the table. "Ishould have got an A, man. Should have got an A. That ticked me off!"
At university he went on to get a really normal degree. He squirms when he mentions his 2:2, but adds by proceed of reason that he outlayed majority of the last 6 months afar from his march behaving professionally. Just to think, he says roughly wistfully, he had once programmed on you do a grade in governing body at Sheffield.
Why did he wish to investigate politics? "I usually longed for to be intelligent, or appear intelligent, and go to a redbrick university and go, "Oh yeah, I"m you do politics!" I used to review Gore Vidal books and think I was cool."
What would he rather be, a domestic thinker with a great grade or the Doctor? He looks at me as if I"m positively bonkers. "Come on!" he shouts. "Politics was a silly idea. I would have been rubbish. It"s the Doctor!"
• The new array of Doctor Who starts on BBC1 atEaster.
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