Hugh Bonneville has played some iconic characters over the years, but one role that he feels he is not suited for is The Doctor in BBC’s Doctor Who, he tells Yahoo UK.
The actor made a guest appearance in the sci-fi series for season 6’s The Curse of the Black Spot, where he played pirate Henry Avery, a captain whose ship is being terrorised by a siren-like creature. Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor and his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) join the ship’s crew, only for Rory to be plagued by the Black Spot too.
Speaking with Yahoo UK for a Role Recall interview, Bonneville shared how watching Smith’s dedication to the role made him realise he “could never” do the same: “It was great, I remember we had a read through and it was the end of one of [their days], they were shooting a previous episode and Matt and Karen came in looking absolutely exhausted because those days on the set —particularly for Matt, and the energy he had to bring to it— were absolutely punishing.
“And we did a rehearsal read through and his leadership and his energy was exemplary, and I realised then and there that I could never play Doctor Who because I’d never have that much energy or the capacity to retain so much fantastical dialogue as he did.”
“But Karen and Matt were wonderfully welcoming,” he adds. “And we went and did a few very cold nights filming on a ship down in Cornwall, I think probably with rain machines and certainly with a bit of brandy at the end of the night to try and keep us warm. But they were great hosts for a guest artist like me.”
Though he has sworn off the role for now, if Bonneville changed his mind it wouldn’t be the first time that a guest star became The Doctor. Peter Capaldi famously appeared in Doctor Who episode The Fires of Pompeii opposite David Tennant, and played another character in Torchwood before being cast as the character after Smith.
The Time Lord is currently being portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa, whose first season as the Doctor ended in triumph earlier this month. He is set to return in the 2024 Christmas special and season 15 of the show.
