Originally published November 18, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
Having been announced to carry on his role as The Doctor in BBC’s popular TV series Doctor Who (the current series of which ends this weekend), Peter Capaldi was part of a Q&A session to promote the DVD release of season eight of the show. While on stage, Capaldi revealed that he actually turned down the chance to play the role for the 1996 TV movie.
“I knew I wouldn’t get it,” he told presenter Frank Skinner. “I loved the show so much that I didn’t want to have anything to do with it unless it was going to be me. I didn’t want to have the disappointment and go through all the palaver of jumping through hoops for something that I would never get. Because I knew it was an American pilot, and I knew they would go for somebody who was well-known – which Paul [McGann] was, and he was fantastic. So I didn’t go along for the audition. I said to my agent ‘Thank you very much, but I don’t want to go along.”
Paul McGann would play The Doctor in what would become a doomed pilot for the franchise. He would however return as the eighth Doctor in the BBC special “TheDay of the Doctor”, which brought past, present and future Doctors together.
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