David Tennant is smart, eccentric and nicely indifferent about awards shows – he’s perfect for the Baftas

David Tennant is about to host one of the most-watched award shows in Britain, but he shouldn’t be too worried. Expectations for this Sunday’s Baftas are low – a faint echo of last year’s mortifying Ariana DeBose female empowerment rap, is still likely haunting your ears. That said, Tennant – tall, Scottish, your favourite Doctor if you’re a Whovian of quality – is a steady yet interesting choice for the gig, a smart and charming household name with a relaxed demeanour and faint tinge of eccentricity. Ideal for this kind of thing, you could say.

The Baftas – think the stuffier cousin to the Oscars – have spent the last few years scrambling for an enduring figurehead. Stephen Fry, who hosted 12 times between 2001 and 2017, once seemed in perfect rhythm with the show – someone wry and witty, with none of the gauche flamboyance of his American counterparts. But since Fry stepped down as master of ceremonies, the show has struggled to find hosts with the right blend of showbizzy flair and outsider-looking-in detachment. So we’ve had a rotation of Fry-alikes (Joanna Lumley), raunchy comics (Graham Norton, Rebel Wilson) and, weirdly, This Morning hosts (Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond) – none of whom seem to have hit the right note.

Last year’s ceremony was a nadir in this regard – an erratic pairing of Hammond (loud, nervous, too far out of her wheelhouse) and Richard E Grant (stiff, nervous, too far out of his wheelhouse). The effort was certainly visible, a mutual eagerness from both presenters to make the ceremony zippy and fun, but the results were leaden. And, once DeBose realised she could rhyme “Blanchett Cate you’re a genius” with “Jamie Lee, you were all of us” and absolutely nobody tried to sabotage her microphone, we were well and truly doomed.

Tennant could be the answer to the show’s prayers. Throughout his career, the actor has mastered a scrappy kind of likeability, something that bleeds through even in very disparate roles. His five years as the Doctor – sandwiched between the Christopher Eccleston and Matt Smith eras – saw him lend the character an excitable, sweetly wild energy that has rippled through all of his successors in the role. In fact, he was such a hit he was recently brought back to reprise the role – slightly spoiling nascent Doctor Ncuti Gatwa’s arrival in the process. Roles in Russell T Davies’s acclaimed Casanova and Prime Video’s silly, fantastical Neil Gaiman series Good Omens – where he plays a rambunctious demon – have proven similarly endearing. That wryness is even there when he’s at his most sullen, as in the blockbuster ITV mystery drama Broadchurch.

Tennant’s Bafta gig has also coincided with his shift into being more of a public figure. The actor was famously guarded at the peak of his Doctor Who fame and told The Guardian in 2011 that he preferred to be known as an actor and not a famous celebrity. He didn’t want to talk publicly about his then-girlfriend, now-wife Georgia, for instance, despite the inherent curiosity of the fact that she is the daughter of Doctor Who’s Peter Davison. “I have a very happy family life, very blessed, yeah,” Tennant said. “I understand there’s an interest, and I don’t want to feed it.”

Over the years, though, he has opened up. “We’re not quite as squeamish as we were,” he’d tell The Guardian in 2020, of life with Georgia and their five children. “I don’t think we’ll ever be sharing pictures of our children in Hello! magazine, but I think a lot of that comes from an insecurity about being uncovered or invaded. The longer you’re together, the less that feels like a threat.”

Around that time, he allowed cameras inside his real-life home as he co-starred with his wife and children in Staged, a satirical comedy in which he and Michael Sheen played fictionalised, overwhelmingly luvvie versions of themselves. He’s also moved into podcasting, hosting an interview series in which he chats to stars including Olivia Colman and Whoopi Goldberg. In the process he’s been revealed to be a natural raconteur, opinionated and conversational. It’s no wonder Bafta came calling.

david tennant is smart, eccentric and nicely indifferent about awards shows – he’s perfect for the baftas

Scrappy likeability: Tennant in ‘Doctor Who’ (BBC Studios)

Smartly, Tennant seems to know what he’s in for. In recent interviews about his turn at the Baftas, he seems aware that it’s not a make-or-break gig for him. And that the kind of slightly too eager positivity that felled last year’s hosts doesn’t seem to have plagued him so far. “I don’t currently feel particularly challenged because everything’s written down for me and I don’t have to worry about winning or not winning an award,” he told The Guardian. “If it was the first night of a play, I’d be curled up in a corner in the foetal position. But the fact that it’s not my day job certainly feels liberating.” (Despite this potent image, he did receive glowing reviews for his last big play, December’s Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse.)

He’s similarly been smart to distance himself from the likes of Jo Koy, the relatively unknown US comedian who hosted January’s Golden Globes awards. You could practically see Koy bombing manically from space, alongside Taylor Swift’s glare of disapproval from the audience whenever he mentioned her. “Not being a comic I feel gives me slight cover,” he told Variety this week, when asked about the lessons he’s learnt from Koy. “I’m not really expected to be good at any of that stuff. I’m just there to hold it all together.”

He also seemed just as uncertain as we are about what he’ll end up doing on the night in question. Apart from making absolutely no jokes about Taylor Swift, that is. “Don’t diss Tay Tay,” he added to Variety, in reference to things he’s learnt from Koy. “I live in a house of Taylor Swift fans, so I know better.”

See what I mean about being smart and charming?

The Bafta Film Awards screen on Sunday at 7pm on BBC One

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