An accidental punch in the face from Brian Blessed sent Peter Capaldi to the hospital where he was mistaken for a crossdresser.
Back in March, we posted an article about how Brian Blessed is interested in being the next Doctor. A couple of years ago, he and Peter Capaldi each shared with the press an anecdote about how Bless accidentally punched Capaldi in the face while filming a fight sequence for the 1997 BBC mini-series The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Blessed mentioned that Capaldi was mistaken for a “transvestite” by the hospital staff due to his character Lord Fellamar’s period finery. According to Blessed, because of this, they delayed Capaldi’s treatment. If so, that would have been unacceptable misconduct on their part. Fortunately, he was not as badly hurt as had originally been feared.
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On May 18th of this year, Blessed was asked on Loose Women to confirm the veracity of this tale, which he did. He also mentioned to Calibre in February that he would like to appear on Doctor Who in some capacity in the hopes that he and Capaldi would get to fight again. It would not be Blessed’s first time on the program, having played King Yrcanos in ‘Mindwarp,’ episodes five through eight of the 1986 serial ‘The Trial of a Time Lord.’
Two days after Blessed’s appearance on Loose Women, John Barrowman strutted his stuff on the program in high heels, but not before falling off of a chair.
It is ironic that such a misidentification would occur at that particular time, considering that Capaldi has actually crossdressed or dressed in drag (the former being mundane, the latter being more exaggerated) on various other occasions. For a few examples, you can see him do so in the movie Hotel! and the two television series The Comic Strip Presents and Prime Suspects 3.
He is quite stunning.
Peter Capaldi in Prime Suspects 3 – credit: ITV
During the Doctor Who panel at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con, Capaldi suggested that the concept of a female Doctor should be tested out by doing a drag episode. While intriguing, this does rather miss the mark, as dressing in drag does not change one’s sex or gender. Anyway, Chris Hardwick referred to the concept as “Doctor Doubtfire.”
You can find Capaldi’s comment at the 39:00 mark in the video below:
This brings to mind times that characters crossdressed throughout the history of Doctor Who. For a couple of classic examples, the Second Doctor disguised himself as a washerwoman in ‘The Highlanders,’ and the Third Doctor disguised himself as a cleaning woman in ‘The Green Death.’
Related Story: Doctor Who Retro Review: ‘The Green Death’ Episode 4
More recently, in ‘The Woman Who Lived,’ Lady Me adopted the male alter ego known as the Knightmare. This may be slightly tangential, however, if you take into account that Me’s gender may be non-binary.
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