Back in 2009, Matt Smith was announced as the next lead actor in Doctor Who, tasked with the almighty challenge of succeeding David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. The idea of following on from David Tennant was incredibly daunting; Tennant quickly became one of the most beloved Doctors of all time. However, Smith was able to bring his own unique charm and quirkiness to the role, creating some of the most memorable moments in the show's rich history.
Smith wasn't left alone. In fact, Tennant remained around to offer some wisdom. "The line-learning for that job was insatiable, and David Tennant, God love him, said to me when I phoned him I'd got the job and asked him for bits of advice and he was really generous with that," Smith told Variety.
His main piece of advice? All lines need to be learned and revised and memorized completely. "He was like, 'Learn all of your lines on the Sunday,' because you've got to go back and do them, because you're shooting like 10 pages a day."
Looking back, Smith totally agrees with the advice. The Doctor loves to droan on about all sorts of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, so his scripts can get pretty long. "Obviously, it's television, so you're not doing it visually in quite the same way you would in a film," Smith said. You've got to explain what's going on to the audience because the story has to move so quickly. So the line learning was just off the Richter scale, a lot."
Matt Smith and David Tennant would later appear in the show at the same time during the 50th-anniversary special, which saw the two Doctors work together in a tale of multiversal chaos.
The Whoniverse has now undergone a soft reboot, with Ncuti Gatwa taking on the role as the Doctor and Millie Gibson playing his companion Ruby Sunday. The new season, overseen by Russell T. Davies, is the perfect jumping-on point for newcomers to the franchise. New episodes air weekly on Disney+.
Right now, Matt Smith is reprising his role as Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon season 2, which premieres June 16 on HBO.
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