Russell T Davies

Summary

David Tennant Does a Podcast With… — Russell T. Davies Episode Summary

Release Date: March 11, 2025
Podcast Information:
Title: David Tennant Does a Podcast With…
Host: David Tennant
Guest: Russell T. Davies
Produced by: Sony Music Entertainment / No Mystery

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of "David Tennant Does a Podcast With…," David Tennant sits down with acclaimed television writer and producer Russell T. Davies. Known for revitalizing Doctor Who, creating groundbreaking series like Queer as Folk, and producing impactful dramas such as It's a Sin, Davies shares intimate insights into his life, career, and the creative processes behind some of television’s most influential works.

Early Life and Influences

Russell T. Davies opens up about his childhood in Wales, detailing the profound impact of his parents and the environment in Swansea. He recalls, “My mum had been brought up out on the Gower in absolute poverty...,” highlighting the resilience and resourcefulness instilled in him from a young age (05:00). Davies discusses his early affinity for storytelling, nurtured through the family's love for books and magazines, which fueled his passion for writing and art.

Education and Discovering Television

Davies reflects on his school years, emphasizing his involvement with the West Cormorant Youth Theatre. He notes, “My real life was when I was 11, 12 and I joined the West Cormorant Youth Theatre...,” underscoring how theater became his sanctuary away from an unfulfilling school environment (07:21). This formative experience cemented his love for drama and laid the foundation for his future career in television.

Breaking into Television: Early Challenges

Russell T. Davies candidly discusses the struggles he faced while trying to break into the television industry. Despite his determination, he was repeatedly turned down for BBC training schemes. Persisting through rejection, he recounts, “I applied, got turned down next year, applied for that, got three years running. I got turned down and I was so furious...” (12:24). This persistence eventually paid off, leading him to join Granada Television, where he collaborated with influential writers and producers who were beginning to shift the landscape of British television.

Creating Queer as Folk: A Groundbreaking Movement

One of the most pivotal moments in Davies's career was the creation of Queer as Folk. He shares the inspiration behind the show, aiming to depict authentic gay lives on screen. “If you ask me for a story now, I'd say, right, there's two men walking down the street, one of them's murdered...,” he explains, illustrating his commitment to representing genuine experiences (32:22). Davies discusses the show's initial reception, noting the controversy it stirred and its significant role in mainstreaming LGBTQ+ narratives on television. He reflects, “Queer As Folk... became something life-changing for many viewers...,” highlighting its enduring legacy and personal fulfillment.

Return to Doctor Who: Revitalizing a Classic

Davies's return to Doctor Who marked a significant resurgence for the iconic series. He recounts the challenges and triumphs of rebooting the show, emphasizing the importance of staying true to its roots while introducing fresh elements. “Doctor Who has a lot of gay fans, doesn't it?...,” Davies observes, acknowledging the show's diverse and passionate fanbase (14:52). He details his instinctive decisions, such as maintaining the Daleks' design and infusing emotional depth into the Doctor's character, which contributed to the series' renewed success.

Personal Life and Overcoming Tragedy

A particularly heartfelt segment delves into Davies's personal life, focusing on the devastating loss of his husband, Andrew. Davies shares the harrowing experience of Andrew's battle with a brain tumor, describing the emotional and practical challenges they faced together. “... he lived for another eight years...,” Davies reflects on how their relationship endured through immense hardship (56:48). He discusses the unwavering support and love that sustained him, despite the profound grief, and how these experiences influenced his storytelling, infusing his work with genuine emotion and resilience.

Impact and Legacy

Throughout the conversation, Davies emphasizes the responsibility of creators to represent marginalized communities authentically. “... there is an escape in that sense. And not that television was particularly gay...,” he notes, underscoring his dedication to filling voids within the television landscape (18:19). Davies highlights the transformative power of television in shaping societal perceptions and fostering understanding, a mission that has been central to his body of work.

Future Projects and Reflections

Looking ahead, Russell T. Davies discusses his ongoing projects and the evolving nature of television production. He contemplates the future of Doctor Who and the importance of nurturing new talent within the industry. “...every show it’s a new cast. Every show it’s a new idea...,” Davies explains, highlighting his role in guiding the creative vision and ensuring the legacy of beloved series continues to thrive (49:00). He expresses optimism about the potential for future narratives to inspire and resonate deeply with audiences.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a heartfelt exchange between Tennant and Davies, celebrating their collaborative history and the profound impact of Davies's contributions to television. Their conversation not only sheds light on the intricacies of showrunning and scriptwriting but also offers a poignant look into the personal journeys that shape creative excellence.

Notable Quotes

• Russell T. Davies: "I have never told you how much the youth theatre changed my life." [07:34]
• Russell T. Davies: "Doctor Who has a lot of gay fans, doesn't it?" [14:52]
• Russell T. Davies: "I found it so stunning how Queer As Folk became life-changing for so many viewers." [40:23]
• Russell T. Davies: "You have to transmit. And I think I often call my job nagging." [24:20]
• Russell T. Davies: "The difference between having an idea and expressing that idea is enormous. And somewhere in between, that is where art is." [22:08]

Final Thoughts

This episode offers a comprehensive glimpse into Russell T. Davies's remarkable career and personal resilience. Through candid discussions and shared experiences, Davies articulates the essence of storytelling's power to transform lives and challenge societal norms. Listeners gain a deeper appreciation for the dedication and passion required to shape meaningful television narratives that resonate across generations.

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Note: Timestamps are approximate and based on the provided transcript excerpts.

Transcript

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[Russell T. Davies]

It does not matter which side. You're comfortable. Lovely.

[David Tennant]

Strange.

[Russell T. Davies]

Drinking. Go. Look at you with your research.

[David Tennant]

I have been researching.

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, my God. Oh, look at. Do I wear headphones?

[David Tennant]

Well, I think.

[Russell T. Davies]

Or do you get instructions?

[David Tennant]

I quite like the headphones because it makes you sound. It slightly compresses your voice and makes you sound sexier.

[Russell T. Davies]

I know, but you've got a beautiful voice. Turning.

[David Tennant]

So do you. That Welsh lilt.

[Russell T. Davies]

Where do I. Oh, it is. Where do I plug. Oh, it is plugged in.

[David Tennant]

It's plugged in.

[Russell T. Davies]

I'm stupid. The Scottish and the Welsh. Oh, I can hear myself.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, that's a little bit. Is that okay? You can turn yourself down. I'm a little bit echoey.

[Russell T. Davies]

I hear myself all day long.

[David Tennant]

David Tennant does a podcast with Russell T. Davis. Russell T. Davis, welcome.

[Russell T. Davies]

Hello, David Tennant.

[David Tennant]

I'm not going to start by asking you what The T stands for. Which is what everyone always asks you. We all know it stands for television. Tussle, tussle. Because television has defined your life. Now, is it still true that you leave the telly on when you go out at night?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. And in Cardiff you used to tell me off.

[David Tennant]

I did tell you off.

[Russell T. Davies]

If I've got a program. If I've got a program on television, I will make sure that it's absolutely. Even if I've gone out that night, which is very rare because I'll normally watch things on transmission, but I would absolutely leave it on that channel. Oh, tinking. It's like you don't get registered as a viewer, but you symbolize people who are viewers. Yes. Oh, God. We've started this out with me sounding like a nutcase.

[David Tennant]

Surprisingly needy, I'd say, as a starting point.

[Russell T. Davies]

Give me the praise.

[David Tennant]

Say something nice because it's always. But you have it on all the time, Terry.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Whatever you're doing.

[Russell T. Davies]

And my parents always. Did I get that off? My mum and dad, they were kind of. They were somewhat in awe of. Had a great official status in our house and where people would call around. They'd very rarely turn it off. It would just stay on. And they had a big social life, my parents. They always had people. They were both rugby club people, so they always had people going to and fro. But the telly would always sit there boiling away.

[David Tennant]

So they'd have a party and the telly's just burbling away in the car.

[Russell T. Davies]

Not a party. But no, not then. And they would have parties. They'd get drunk if you. Dinner and have everyone round. So then. But that'll be late. They'd come back after the pub. So there wasn't really television then. Late. If you think about it, past 11, it barely existed. It closed down at midnight and there was nothing on.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

So their kind of parties were like turning up at 11 midnight after the rugby club.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

Drunk as skunks. And so no telly then? No. And I was in bed.

[David Tennant]

So tell me a bit about Barbara and Vivienne.

[Russell T. Davies]

Good. Mum and dad. Lovely little teachers. They were quite. They were quite sort of drawn together. We're both only children, which is quite unusual for Wales then. You know people who have big families. My father went to war at like 16 or 17 and was. And it was traumatic. He had friends who drowned in boiling oil. He had to. Was he in Malta? He had to hose down boatloads of Jews to stop them reaching the port because no one wanted to Take them in.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And so he came back kind of staggering from that. And she was. And the rugby club became his life. That whole generation came back from the war and Swansea Rugby Club, which is a brilliant, beautiful place still to this day. But the bonding of those men was ferocious. Friends for life.

[David Tennant]

Do you think he had some ptsd?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, he only. Especially when my mother died. That's when he really started talking about it. He came up with extraordinary stories that he'd fallen in love with another woman. He'd never met my mother, so the first woman he fell in love with, he had a complete relationship with. And he went back to Swansea. And back then in Swansea, there was no way a Welsh man could go out with a cockney. She was from Shoreditch, I think, and her name was Margaret.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

And that was everyone. Viv. Viv, that can't happen. That poor woman got a train all the way down to Swansea on her own to come knocking at the door to say, viv, I love you. And he wouldn't even let her in the house. He parceled her off down the road to the cafe, the Civic Cafe, which is still there, and she said, I love Viv. He went, no way. There's no way a Welshman can go out with a cockney. Why two different worlds? I mean, I'm very glad he didn't, because then he met my mother, so it all worked out fine for me. But my stuff. I still wonder to this day, it was only after my mother's death he ever told me that story. And I still wonder that. I still hope she was happy. My mum had been brought up out on the Gower in absolute poverty, in what would. I mean, weirdly, if you had that plot of land on the Gower now, we'd be millionaires. But they were like huts my grandmother subsisted by, like making tea and chips for people who passed by. And you didn't have ramblers and who did pass by the odd little farmer. That's how they'd make money, making a cup of tea for passersby. Extraordinary. And then moved into the city. My mum was a bit older and my grandmother worked in the munitions factories and they became Pub Landley. So we're from a very pub owning family on that side. Yeah, the Riddings in Swansea, in a marvellous pub called the Cornish Mount. There's a name. Yeah, in the Cornish Mount, in Salubrious Passage in Swansea.

[David Tennant]

It all sounds fairly medieval.

[Russell T. Davies]

It sounds Dickens, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Or Lord of the Rings. It's like we must cross salubrious passage to get the sword of Omicron. I went to. I went to a huge comprehensive school called olkva, which is 2,300 pupils. That's a bit much.

[David Tennant]

Yes, that's a lot.

[Russell T. Davies]

Looking back, I think that's a bit mad, really.

[David Tennant]

What were you like, a school?

[Russell T. Davies]

Very, very clever. I kind of coasted through it, to be honest. And I was tall. I was so tall. It was obviously. I was a young gay boy when such words weren't to be said. And I was kind. I was bullied a little bit. Not much, actually. I was so tall that I kind of escaped the bullying and I just kind of. I did my drama and I kind.

[David Tennant]

Of kept quiet, but it felt safe.

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, no, my real world was. My real life was when I was 11, 12 and I joined the West Cormorgan Youth Theatre, as made famous by Michael Sheen as well. And that was throughout my entire school years. That was my real life.

[David Tennant]

It's not that you were unhappy at school, it's just that you sort of lived for the other life.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, well, but I wasn't happy at school. I didn't like it. I think looking back, maybe you just feel a bit gay or maybe I just didn't, actually. I was clear. I just didn't. I'd rather be not at school than at school. Is that normal? That's normal.

[David Tennant]

Well, it was for me, certainly.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

Yeah. Because you're being forced to study things you don't necessarily want to study.

[Russell T. Davies]

Absolutely. Yes. Yes. At the end of summer holidays, I was horrible. Horrible having to go back, but I wasn't suffering there. But the. I mean, it was incredible going to this youth theater because I realize now, and it takes me until. In your 60s, you're kind of still working at who you are. And looking back more and more with every passing year, I realize how grateful I am to that. Because you had older boys who were gay, and this is in the 70s we're talking about, like 1977, 1976. 77. When gayness wasn't spoken out loud at all. Certainly not in schools in any shape or form.

[David Tennant]

How out loud was it even in your head at that stage?

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, no, not. You'd never say gay, but you kind of knew. I wouldn't have said a word to anyone, not even to my best friends. Not at all. It's remarkable looking about how little I analyzed it, really. It just was. It was just kind of like just baked in. Born with this baked in, but baked in secret. It's amazing. No one needs to tell you to keep it secret.

[David Tennant]

You were entirely aware that you were finding that photograph more attractive than that photograph?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, absolutely. Yes. That was just. Yes. It's especially weird when you lie watching television because there were so fewer handsome men around in those days. Images of them. Is that true? There were No, I mean, images of handsome men, not handsome men. You know, advertising hadn't discovered the man and posters hadn't discovered the man. It was all women, right? There wasn't. You wouldn't get off a shirtless man on television almost ever. So it was very rare. So those images would come up. When it did come up on television, that was a shock. And something you automatically, instinctively knew you had to keep quiet.

[David Tennant]

And how sort of traditional, slash political, slash religious was your family unit that.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, not religious at all. I was told off for not going to Sunday school and I just refused. The woman came to the door, oh, saying, your son is godless, Mr. Davis. And he told me off and I never went. I just couldn't.

[David Tennant]

Oh, so they weren't that bothered by that?

[Russell T. Davies]

School on a Sunday. Oh, sure, that's cruel, isn't it? I mean, for God's sake.

[David Tennant]

And your parents weren't pushing that, clearly?

[Russell T. Davies]

No, not until they tried. Just because everyone else was going, yeah. And it was actually, I suppose it was quite art. It was full of books. The house was full of books. Books everywhere. I know it in a posh way. My mum loved nothing better than Agatha Christie, but we had Dickens and stuff like that and lots of magazines. My mum was a great magazine, but so full of words, really. And they very much encouraged me because I was kind of like. I was drawing all the time. That's what I did.

[David Tennant]

Yes, of course.

[Russell T. Davies]

I drew and I drew and I drew and I drew all the time. Compulsively.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's funny because I used to draw on my desks at school and the teachers wouldn't tell me off. Everyone kind of liked my drawings. It was a nice thing.

[David Tennant]

Well, they're very good.

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, they're very good, yeah. Yeah.

[David Tennant]

You thought that might be something you might pursue?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, I was dying to. And I loved that. And I kind of. When I said the house is full of magazines, I was kind of. I love magazine design. I always kind of thought I'd want to get into that somehow. And when we were about 15, we had that careers lesson and the careers teacher said to me, what would you like to do? And I was like, well, you know, drawings, graphics. Is that Advertising, Yeah. And then for some reason, she asked me if I was colorblind. I said, yes, I'm colorblind. She went, well, you can't do that. Then.

[David Tennant]

Were you still at that sort of age when the prospect of television as something that might provide a career.

[Russell T. Davies]

No, not that took until I then went to Oxford. And it was in the third year of Oxford, sitting in a pub called the Jericho Tavern, where in Jericho in Oxford, where my friend Kathy Russell said to me, you should work in television. You love television. And I can remember that so clearly because it was like, oh, well, God, that's obvious. Yes.

[David Tennant]

Because where you came from, there were.

[Russell T. Davies]

No precedents, no precedence, no channels. Even in Cardiff, there wasn't much. You think of that as a Welsh language place. The news, there was no proper industry, so it just didn't seem like an option, did it? You need to see it to be it. That is so true. And it never occurred to me. It felt like a goal. And then David Dennis, then, then I was inspired by Kathy Russell, who last was heard of living as a librarian in Paris, but who knows where she is now. But I thought, well, I'll apply. I hope so. I hope so. Hello, Kathy. And so I thought, well, I'll apply for all those BBC training schemes. They still do them, I think, but they had a regular thing every year called taps, Trainee Assistant producer scheme kind of thing. So I applied, got turned down next year, applied for that, got three years running. I got turned down and I was so furious. Cause I so love television. And I so knew they were wrong that I actually wrote to the head of personnel saying, you are wrong. I should be on this training course. Oh, how interesting. She wrote back, come and see me, she said. So I went and saw her and I sat in her office and I said, I love television, I'll do this and that. She said, well, apply again next year. I will keep an eye out for you. The next year they turned me down again.

[David Tennant]

What?

[Russell T. Davies]

What? I know. And literally, I'm not kidding you, roundabout. 2006, 2007, when we were at the he success of Doctor who, I went to that sixth floor in BBC White House, the BBC center, and I stood at the banister overlooking the whole of the BBC and I was like, fuck you at that unknown woman, whoever she was, turning me down.

[David Tennant]

It's interesting though, because you had this love of television which you were only then beginning to realize you might convert into something else.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

And what. But it was. It doesn't sound like you had a childhood that you needed to escape from. But it obviously provided some sort of.

[Russell T. Davies]

That is true. I suppose the gay thing is true. It sounds like a cliche, but there's a life you're not living.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And so there is an escape in that sense. And not that television was particularly gay, although. Is television gay there? I was watching the Magic Roundabout in Doctor who, so really, television was a massive flight of fancy, wasn't it?

[David Tennant]

Yes.

[Russell T. Davies]

And I used to watch everything. I still watch everything. I feel like the last viewer of terrestrial television.

[David Tennant]

And you think that's because you. It sort of imprinted on you as it was so important to you at that age.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's part of my ground. It's part of my grounding in writing as well. It's. It's like a lot of my voice is from, like, Coronation street at its best. Yeah. Those early years of EastEnders, which was so extraordinarily well written. Yeah. There's still great writing on the soaps, but certain periods of those shows were magnificent, and you can kind of see that in my writing as well. I went on to work in soaps as well, and I love them. Well, I think that day is probably near an end now. But. But in those. If you think about the 90s and the Zeros, the 80s 90s zero, they ruled the world. They were number one. They were top five of the charts every single week. So I loved them. Yeah. So.

[David Tennant]

So you're watching them for very. And of. And of course, you were watching Doctor who from a very young age.

[Russell T. Davies]

Absolutely. And that was one of my very first memories. I can remember William Hartnell falling to the floor and regenerating. And the thing I remember is that the switches on the TARDIS were operating on their own.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Which is so frightening. Why is that frightening? You can never tell what's gonna terrify a child. It's not a big lizard. It's just switches going click, click, click on their own. And I found that so scary. And then the next. Remember Power of the Daleks at the end of Power of the which is missing from the other episodes.

[David Tennant]

These are all episodes that don't exist anymore.

[Russell T. Davies]

Gone.

[David Tennant]

They're all just in your head.

[Russell T. Davies]

TARDIS disappears and the camera pans down to a Dalek dome and the eye stalk starts moving on its own, saying, we are still alive. We will come back. You know, like that. And that's missing. But that's in my head. It's a fact that that happens, but it's only in my head. I can see it.

[David Tennant]

But what is it about that show?

[Russell T. Davies]

I know, I know that did that.

[David Tennant]

To you and did that to a lot. There's a lot of people now working in television.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Directly inspired by that television program.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, at that age, it's obviously the terror, it's the strongest emotion you'll feel when watching television. And that and laughter. That's why we all. That's why Dad's army gets repeated to this day, because we love it. We can watch a 15th repeat of dad's army and still laugh and because most television just kind of makes you smile and it burbles along and you might get excited if there's a chase, but it's very rarely gets you right in that. I remember, I'm remembering recently. I'm looking at my life. I'm not dying, but it's like I can remember a really pivotal moment in my life where, where I became what I became now, which is that. And you can look at the dates and I was 7 years old when a film called A Man Called Horse came out. Oh yeah, A western song. Richard Harris. My dad said to the family, let's go and see that. Seven years old. I was turned away because it was a 12 or whatever films were rated as that. I was too young. So my dad and my sisters went in. My mum said, well, all right, we'll go around the corner. We go to the theater, to the Grand Theatre, which was showing Juno and the Peacock. And I'd love to look up this production to see who the cast of who was in. I have tried to look it up and I can't find a cast list of who was in Juno and the Peacock in 1970 in Swansea. Because that play reaches an end. At the end, her heart is broken. Juno is standing there and she's got a famous speech that I now know cause I've looked it up where she stands there, she's lost everything. Her son's been shot or something, I can't remember. But she stands there going, take away their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh. And for a little seven year old boy sitting there, this was the most extraordinary, extraordinary moment in the world. And I literally felt like I had a spear through my heart. The emotion of it and the size of it and the truth of whatever she was doing. I mean, I was startled and I can remember it, I can remember her face and the set and the impact of it to this day. And I literally came out of that play knowing what drama was. And actually I kind of wonder if I'm always Reaching for the size of Juno, standing there with her broken heart, declaiming to the world. The whole of Ireland is falling into the pit unless they stop killing each other. Seven years old. Isn't that amazing?

[David Tennant]

So that is before you theater, before anything.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes, yes. When you're looking at who you are and how you became what you became. I kind of. I've had that memory for a long time. It's kind of risen up recently. Until I'm coming back to Doctor who, which is that you feel it.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

More than you'd feel anything else.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

You know, we all loved, oh, I don't know, the Famous Five or Grange Hill or stuff like that. But you wouldn't quite feel it in the way that you feel terror and you feel laughter. So it's just on that size of things, really. Doctor who, it's big. Yes, It's a big show. And when it's frightening, it's terrifying.

[David Tennant]

Yes. Doctor who has a lot of gay fans, doesn't it? A disproportionate amount.

[Russell T. Davies]

I thought that, and that is true. Except when I worked Queers. Hoak. One of the lads in that was 15. Charlie Hunnam as Nathan. So I went to talk to young gay boys, which is very rare to find in those days. But there was a gay youth group in Manchester. So this was 1998, when, of course, Doctor who was off air. They all love Star Trek. They were all Star Trek fans. And it was fascinating. Cause I thought, oh, there's a space for a science fiction show in your hearts that's gone. I thought 10 years ago it would have been Doctor who with you lot.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And they were all Data Spock, old Star Trek, new Star Trek. They were full of it. They could all quote it. So maybe it is an escape thing. It's like if you're gay and you're stuck at home and you don't feel like you fit anywhere, go to a fantasy world. And that's where I belong.

[David Tennant]

Interesting.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, fascinating. I was kind of. I was a bit pissed off, to be honest. I thought Doctor who was really unique. Then I went, oh, right, you're any old show.

[David Tennant]

Right. It's just something about science fiction that maybe.

[Russell T. Davies]

Maybe all of a sudden those two big shows.

[David Tennant]

Anyway, yeah, it's interesting. Cause I. Well, we're slightly getting out of sequence. But since I've been working with you, you've been sort of slightly more than just a writer. Cause I know you came up through children's television and you were. But I wonder when this started for you. Cause you work as more than a scriptwriter. You've adopted the kind of showrunner model which is relatively new to this country. We brought it in from network television.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

And now, I think, in your wake has slightly become the industry standard in this country. Exactly what people aspire to. Just for anyone who doesn't quite understand what that means, could you just give a slight sketch?

[Russell T. Davies]

It means you're kind of having more of an insight into production and an overview. It means you have producers, but it means you are on top of the schedule and the budget and the cast. You're just in charge of the whole tone of the show. Well, you've got.

[David Tennant]

You have. You're sort of the king of it. I mean, you've got the Pirate of Vito, haven't you?

[Russell T. Davies]

Over any. I do. Which you very rarely use because it's not like that. But yes, you get to choose the director. You certainly get to choose the cast with everyone else, not on your own. Very significantly, I think you go to the edit and that's why I've got a lot to say. When you get to the edit and you shape it and then you get to the mix or the sound and the music is all part of it, you just get to say all those things. And actually, weirdly, it's where soaps are very good training for that. People. People talk about showrunning like it's completely new, but when I used to store line soaps, to storyline it, you had to know exactly where you go on location, how many scenes you could do on location, how many scenes are in the studio, whether someone's on holiday, whether to program in their holidays, pickups. You were actually kind of scheduling the show as a storyliner. The extra scheduling would come, but you were very much in charge of the production because they couldn't write it otherwise. The writers had to know. You give a storyline to a writer. They had to know how much was on location, how much was on the street, how much was down the road, whether you could go to a nightclub for a scene and stuff like that. And you decide whether they could go to a nightclub or. So it's a big.

[David Tennant]

That's a kind of managerial.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's managerial. It's the beginning of showrunning to be a storyline, actually. Yeah.

[David Tennant]

Yes.

[Georgia Tennant]

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[David Tennant]

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[Russell T. Davies]

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[David Tennant]

I've got a quote from you, which I liked, which was, you may not remember ever saying this, maybe you never did. It says, the difference between having an idea and expressing that idea is enormous. And somewhere in between, that is where art is.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

And I wonder if that, as a showrunner, are you sort of trying to be the sort of midwife that helps people from one from the, from the having the idea to the expressing the idea well.

[Russell T. Davies]

And they're also your crutches as well. You're leaning on them like crazy. You know, great designers, great, great people. But yes, it's. It's like that is. That is very true. I always think that's coming back to the art. It's like a sketch is so much better than the finished picture. Sometimes just sketch something quickly. Oh, it's so full of life and it's so brilliant. And sometime when you have an idea. Not sometimes, always when you have an idea actually, then you have to turn it into words with commas and adverbs and a full stop. And it becomes so dull. I think you must read a lot of scripts that are actually so dull to get life into a script on the page is really, really hard work. It's in the punctuation, it's on the spacing on the page. How much white space is on the page? I think, you know, if there's a chase, it's got to look like it. You know, you don't write a chase with a great big, heavy, dense block of text, do you? But a lot of scripts do. And it's a lot of work to get that right. I can see it in my head. I can always see it in my head. And getting it to look like that, it is like drawing. I've just realized that getting that on the page is very hard work, but pays off because you get closer and closer and closer to what it should look like.

[David Tennant]

So that's part of leading the team, presenting them with a script that is not just the words. It's also got the kind of rhythm.

[Russell T. Davies]

And the sense and it's amazing. And you're there. You should be in the meetings to get the tone of it to. You just have to transmit. And I think I often call my job nagging. I say things again and again and again and again, while at the same time you have to leave the door open for them to say things to you. Now, why did you change things?

[David Tennant]

Yes, because any making television programs, it's a collective thing, isn't it? Which is stimulating and frustrating, presumably in equal measure.

[Russell T. Davies]

I mean, actually, I'm lucky. I don't find it frustrating often. Okay, maybe it's frustrating every day because, I mean, it's always a multi million dollar mov running in my head. And, you know, then you get the rushes, you're like, okay, that's Cardiff and not quite the same. But then you get to the edit and you just. It's like, you've got. I always say you've got a script that's operating. You try to get a script operating at 100%, and that's hard to begin with, but you try to get 100% of its potential. Then when you start to make it, that percentage goes down. It's like, it's cloudy today. Oh, that's 95%. Oh, there's only 10 extras instead of 100. Okay, it's 90%. Oh, that's just a bit clumsy. You're down to 80%. And then you go into post production and it's your job to put that 20% back in, to hide that lack of crowd, to make it sound good, to put music on it that you never dreamt would be so good, but better than the music in your head, even. So you shore it back up. And indeed, sometimes you're very lucky and you start to shore it up to 110%. Sometimes it gets better and better and better. So it's kind of like. It's like being a laborer.

[David Tennant]

But there's a rapidity of decision making that's required, isn't there? Because you're being asked a hundred things all day and you have to have pretty quick answers.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

How often do you doubt yourself? How often does it feel? Or are you pretty good at.

[Russell T. Davies]

I'm pretty good at. That's one thing Nicola Schindler says. She says. She always says to me, russell, we. We get ahead in this career because we make a decision quickly.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And sometimes, even if it's the wrong decision, it's like, yes, just back it. And it's never that wrong making life and death, is it? It's like, it's about, should the extra be standing there or there? Should the jumper be blue or black? It's like, you know, you survive a lot of those decisions. And I also did. I also did when I did Queer As Folk and Nicholas Schindler was a very big part of saying to me, get on set. Come and be an producer on this as well. And I spent a good kind of 10 years on set. So by the time I see Doctor who came along, I wasn't spending so long on set because partly because it was so busy, I was back in the office.

[David Tennant]

But you mean literally sitting on. Literally being there on every day.

[Russell T. Davies]

I spent 10 years, like, going every single day on vacation, which I find exhausting. And actually, as a writer, boring to be. That's when you get the million questions.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And you might be glad you've had one question every Day. But that's a long day to. Just one question. But it means I've been on set. I know how long it takes to do things. They say. There's a say. Someone said once about Thornton Wilder. Someone said, thornton Wilder is a good writer because he knows how long it takes to cross from one side of the stage to another. And I love that. But I don't know if that's true. But. But I think there is a great experience in sitting there saying, how many scripts you must get. You must get this all the time. How many scripts? He gets in the car and drives off. That's two minutes. That's a long time. You get in, you take your keys out, you do the seatbelt.

[David Tennant]

Starting up of a car. Not quite.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's not fast. Yeah. It's like in a million scripts say that. And then the script normally says. Then she runs off to the car saying, come back. And you go, well, she's had two minutes. Yeah. While he was sitting there. It's like. And you literally learn practical things like that by being on set. And you learn how to cope when it rains. And you learn how to cope with extras and you learn how to cope with actors. Actually, that's a skill in itself. That's a skill that's never spoken of.

[David Tennant]

Yes, of course.

[Russell T. Davies]

It is never spoken of. The relationship between producers and actors is.

[David Tennant]

You manage to engender a huge loyalty in your teams. Is that. Is that just by chance or do you work at that? Is that something.

[Russell T. Davies]

I do work at it.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

I do contact people a lot.

[David Tennant]

You do.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's. I do. It's like every.

[David Tennant]

Which must be quite a chunk of.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's a chunk of the morning every day. But it's like when equally. I mean, they're out shooting. They're shooting this spin off now for Doctor who called the War between the Land and the Sea. And they were Bristol yesterday, shooting a great big stunt on the edge of the river. And a stuntman had to dive in into Britain's filthy waters on my behalf. Okay. Because the script said so.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

So you get the rushes and I think you have. I mean, you're partly there to say when something's gone wrong. So you have to have a constant relationship with the actors and the filming team, just in case you want to say, hold on, pull that back. We did something with someone the other day. It's like, just pull that performance back slightly and. But also to really say, well done, that stunt. That stunt is amazing. Or you were in a field facing a Dalek 4:00am thank you. I think. I think so. I do. That is.

[David Tennant]

It's a bit tactical.

[Russell T. Davies]

That is working at loyalty, but it's also true. I genuinely mean it. So it's not hard working. Yes.

[David Tennant]

It's not disingenuous, but it is also a little bit tactical because you're. You're.

[Russell T. Davies]

I suspect I'm like most actors from. From the action I get from the reaction I get from actors. I think most actors don't get any feedback on rushes or stuff like that. I find that weird. So you're doing stuff in a void. Yeah, well, you got the director telling you stuff, but I think, isn't it nice to hear?

[David Tennant]

Oh, of course. I. People hang on it. I know that's. I. But they do. And. And that's why I think one of the reasons you engender great loyalty. I wonder sometimes that you are almost not able to exhibit indecision because there's a whole team who are literally swiveling around and looking to you for approval or affirmation or guidance. And where does your indecision go? Where do your moments of anxiety. Are they in the middle of the night?

[Russell T. Davies]

Right. Cause actually, I. I don't show indecision at those moments because I have a decision.

[David Tennant]

Yes. Okay.

[Russell T. Davies]

I'm not faking a decision. I'm like, yes, do this, yes, do that. And it might turn out to be wrong, but at least. At least you've gone somewhere. Indecision holds everything up. And when you have to refer things upwards, you know, and. Oh, that's when everything stalls and works in a state of fear. But my indecision comes from. Is at the writing stage or before the writing stage. I live in a world of indecision. I'm kind of starting to write something new now for Channel four, maybe. And. Oh, it's. It's. It's muck in my head. It's just. It's just filthy nonsense and a whole forest, a vast arboreal forest of indecision. Listen, my metaphors are out of control. An arboreal forest, but that's normal. And I kind of trudged there and I will find my way through.

[David Tennant]

You've had to learn that's normal, presumably.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

You've had to go through some sort of.

[Russell T. Davies]

Takes a long time to learn. The panic and fear of that is less than it was when I was younger.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

But then again, sometimes the panic and fear drives you. So I'm. Well, I'm kind of looking. When I come to write it, there will be a lot of that Panic and fear will come back. And I'll sit there, I write page one and I'll think I'm a genius. I'll be on page 30 and think everything's at an end, Sell the house, go and live in a hut on the Gower. And then you get to the end and I tend to have saved it, I think. So that's the normal process. My lovely husband, my husband Andrew used to sit there and say, you always feel like this and you always get to the end of it in the end.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And I miss not having someone to say that.

[David Tennant]

Of course. Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

But you just. Yes. So that's where the indecision is writing, because it's the options. You've got every option before it exists, before there's an actor standing there in a blue shirt, there's anything, it might not be a man, might be a woman, it could be anything, they could say anything, go anywhere and do anything. That's the terrifying thing, the million choices you have with every single scene. And Paul Abbott used to say that. When I was young, I was very much mentored by the genius Paul Abbott. And very early on he said to me, you're good at deciding which version of a scene to go with. Because in any scene there's seven different versions. There's actually 7,000 different versions, but there's seven. The funny one, the fast one, the long one, the whatever, the very serious one, the one that's full of jokes, whatever, and it's not that simple, but, you know, seven different slants on things. And I do, possibly because I've watched so much television, I do have a good instinct to go to that one. That's the one I'll write.

[David Tennant]

Well, that, that, that sort of brings me to talk about Queer's Folk, which, because you, you had a career which could have gone in 7,000 different directions and in 1999 you wrote queer as Folk, which in many ways defined everything that happened to you after.

[Russell T. Davies]

That still opens doors for me now.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was, it was not. You were depicting life, gay life in Manchester, living and loving and everything else. And in many ways you were dramatic. A life that you were or that you had been living.

[Russell T. Davies]

Absolutely.

[David Tennant]

But to a lot of the tele watching public, to a lot of the press in particular, this was an unknown world, this was a mysterious world, this was an underground world. But in putting that on television, it was quite a statement and it became quite controversial. Did you intend that or were you just writing what you had to write?

[Russell T. Davies]

I don't Think we didn't quite realize how controversial it would be, partly because we thought it was late night on Channel 4, where they said they were gonna show it at 10 o'clock and they moved it to 10:30. In the weeks before 10:30, nothing. Nothing goes out now at 10:30.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

So it was like. So we kind of felt small and bold and. But also, I mean, let's not be disingenuous because, I mean, if you've seen it now, it's filthy.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, my God, it's filthy. It's like, good God Almighty. Which I love. And I think more television should be like that. So there's partly a sense of like, in my mind, maybe television always was like that. That's my version of television.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

So. So it doesn't feel shocking or controversial to fill that space. That's the space where. Where I was anyway, that kind of version was running in my head. And also it was. It was missing from the whole of. And I think that's your job as a writer, to look at what's missing. Doctor who was missing once.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's what was part of the reason. Doctor who, this is missing. And. And I like. I mean, on the one hand, we're all many people, aren't we? On the one hand, I could have sat down and written Coronation street on that same old street for 50 years. On the other hand, I'm looking at television going, what's not on? Where were those vast. When there's big open prairies when no other writers are around, I love that you look to the horizon, you look behind you, there's no one else here. Marvelous. I love that.

[David Tennant]

And did you feel or were you aware that this would be a moment? Because this was probably the first time you became more than an on screen credit to most people.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, that's true.

[David Tennant]

You were sort of associated with it. You were quizzed about it, you were. You were newsworthy suddenly.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Tennant]

How did. Were you prepared or how did you feel about sticking your head above the parapet?

[Russell T. Davies]

That was unexpected. Except again, I was lucky to work at Granada because they. Out of anyone in the country, they already had a tradition of that and that they employed Kate Mellor. They employed. She'd just written. She'd written Band of Gold before that. So it was Kate Mellor's Band of Gold that was everywhere.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

And Paul Abbott was writing Reckless and State of Play. So I was working and Jimmy McGovern was writing Cracker, and that was already known as Jimmy McGovern's cracker. So it was kind of a rising moment where the writer was becoming synonymous with the show, which was new. But I wasn't the first. But I was one of the first. And the simple truth of it is, it's like I'm. I mean, I can do it. That's a simple fact. Yes, give me an interview. I can do it. So therefore I'll do the interview. But it was very much with that show that I had to stand up and do it. Because a lot of the interview, it was, you know, attacked by the press massively. And they were all out to trip us up. And it's not fair to put actors into that position if we're gonna have arguments about gay law and gay rights and should gays be allowed to marry? Should they be allowed in the army? Bear mind how few gay rights we had back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the age of consent was 21. It was not the same as the straight age of consent. It's not fair to put an actor in that position to argue that which. What they wanted. And if actors are happy to, then fine. But they're probably not going to be an expert in what law, what happened in 1967 to the emancipation of homosexuality. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I literally had to step forward. I felt honor bound that someone had to put this point of view.

[David Tennant]

You could sort of become a de facto gay rights activist.

[Russell T. Davies]

You do, unhappily, yes. Very, very happily.

[David Tennant]

That wasn't something that appalled you or made you nervous or.

[Russell T. Davies]

No, I kind of. No, I kind of thought, this is it. The most awful moment was showing it to my mother. That was terrible. Right. Going home that Christmas. It was on in February, and I went home at Christmas with the vhs and my father was blind, so he couldn't watch it. So I let him go to bed and. And putting that on. She thought it was soft porn. Oh, okay. She said she was massively devastated.

[David Tennant]

It was. I remember.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

Sitting at home on a. On a Friday night on Channel 4, seeing it go out for the first time and there were two. Two actors rimming each other.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, I know.

[David Tennant]

And I thought that. I don't think I've seen this on network television.

[Russell T. Davies]

No. Before or since.

[David Tennant]

Before or since. So everyone around, everyone involved in that production must have known you were putting something on network television that was.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Were there long discussions? Were there those sort of endless, endless meetings or. Channel 4.

[Russell T. Davies]

Channel 4 were out to make a noise. Let's be. They were very much kind of revolutionizing their drama because they'd had like 10 years of making. They'd make very quality things like Dance to the Music of Time with Simon Russell, Bill, which was beautiful.

[David Tennant]

Beautiful.

[Russell T. Davies]

But maybe not your radical channel message. You know, BBC2 should be making that. BBC1 should be making that. So they very much. I realize now, I didn't quite get this at the time, but I realized they were out to make a noise and. And there were endless discussions about those sex scenes. And the marvelous thing was it went up to levels of Channel 4 I've never heard of. It was the. It was like. It was that people would appear board would appear. It went to the. It went to some head of the Channel 4 board whose name I haven't heard before or since. But the ultimate authority appeared to watch it. And of course, the one thing they asked to do was to shorten it. They said, well, okay, yes, we believe in this program. We're supporting you. Let's just shorten it. And as Nicola Shind was very clever. She knew we shortened it. It was more impactful. The scenes are more of a jolt like that. They hit harder by being shorter.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

So Nicola watched it and went, that's actually a bit more shocking because we've shortened it. But let's not tell them that.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Let's leave that go. So bang, there it was.

[David Tennant]

Yeah. Because you have written. You've written a lot about gay life, the gay experience and how much that is. Write what you know. And how much is that a desire to proselytize, normalize, educate to know.

[Russell T. Davies]

I mean, it's. It's. It's partly. It's just the stories that are in my heart.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

If you ask me for a story now, I'd say, right, there's two men walking down the street, one of them's murdered. Or there's two men on a cruise ship. And it's what I think. Think of naturally.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And it's also. I do think it's one of the things that keeps us young. I think the thing is, keeps gay men and gay women young anyway. Because we're always in the news. We're always in the headlines. There's all of a sudden now it's trans. Right. Or someone's always banging on about us. So we. We never go off the boil. We never go off topic. And I find that fascinating. And I think we're in a. What I want to write next. We're in a very fascinating and mad world, as you know, that has to be written about. I've got to find some way shape or form to write about this while it's happening.

[David Tennant]

Because you are political. I mean, you're. You're a political thinker. You're a political person.

[Russell T. Davies]

I'm a very simple lefty, really. There's nothing complicated about it. But yes, I do believe in it. Coming out again, Juno and the Peacock. There's one standing there and I wouldn't have known the words IRA at the time, but that's what she's shouting and screaming about is the. Is the militia and the politics of Ireland at the time. Isn't that funny? It all comes back to Juno and the Pegog. Actually, the first thing, thing that speared me through the heart was political.

[David Tennant]

Yes.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's funny. I've only realized that on this podcast.

[David Tennant]

Yes. Well, there you go.

[Russell T. Davies]

And I do believe in. Do I think, well, it's not that I believe in doing it. I just can't. I can't. I'm writing away and someone starts spouting off and off they go and, and. But I think I can't believe how people don't write like that. I just think that's natural.

[David Tennant]

Yes. So that anger is an. Is an engine for you.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes, yes. It certainly gives you something to write about. And it doesn't get any better. And the world's getting mad. I've clearly done nothing to sa at all. I mean, but they keep finding new ways to attack us, don't they?

[David Tennant]

Yeah, but I feel like Queer as Folk did nudge the narrative. It did, sort of.

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, thank you. I hope so.

[David Tennant]

I feel like it made people. Well, it just. It normalized something.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, I hope so. Yes, they did have a trend. And literally the weird thing is now I get people about once a week someone in Manchester will come up to me saying, I moved to Manchester. Manchester because of that show. I mean, literally life changing as in as. And I, you know, I'll say, how is it? And they'll have a husband and they'll have adopted kids or what? Or they have kids and it's like you go, wow, it was so. It worked there. Every single one of them says, yes, it worked.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And that's amazing. Every week. Yeah, every week a stranger will do that to me. That's lovely.

[David Tennant]

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[Russell T. Davies]

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[Russell T. Davies]

You'll just be getting started.

[David Tennant]

Visit chevy.com to learn more. I imagine Queer As Folk after Queer As Folk, you were not someone who was scrabbling around for a commission anymore. I imagine that sort of opened.

[Russell T. Davies]

You never believe you're gonna get another commission. It's. It's like. It was a marvellous moment in like 26, the Christmas of 2016, when both years and Years and It's A Sin had been turned down. And I remember being in my kitchen thinking, oh, I better not spend that much this Christmas. Genuinely, that was one of the really great, interesting moment of thinking, oh, you know, you've got to watch yourself. There's no guaranteed work ever. Then they both got made. But. But, yeah.

[David Tennant]

How many things have you written that have never seen the light of day?

[Russell T. Davies]

Not many, to be honest. There was a lovely spin off from Queer As Folk called Misfits. Long before there was a show called Misfits, we had Misfits about the house that they'd all lived in. It was much more of a soap version of those characters that you could run for like 20 weeks of the year that was all set up and greenlit and a producer was appointed. And then suddenly the management change, it's like, thank you very much, Goodbye.

[David Tennant]

You could dust it down, do you know.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's still good, that show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, off we go.

[David Tennant]

You then, you. Then in the immediate aftermath of that, you kind of skipped genres very giddily. You made a sort of a rom com with Bob and Rose. You made a sort of fantasy parable with Second Coming. You made a sex comedy with Casanova. Were you sort of unleashed?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, I was, yes. And very determined not to do the same thing all the time. Right. When they did Queer As Folk, they did a publicity campaign where they put a cinema full of gay men in into a cinema and watched it and then they vox popped them when they came out. And this one smily arrogant man stood there saying, well, he's obviously very good at writing the gay stuff. Let's see what else he comes up with. And I was literally like you. How much of my career was like you? Yeah, yeah, it's a great drive to have you two. And I was like, to this day, I can picture that man thinking, right, you, I'm going to do anything and everything. And I have, yes, I did even like, you know, one of the greatest, one of my greatest joys in life is to won a B for Bernard Cribbins on Old Jack's Boat. I was program for under five. I did the Christmas episode and that one of after. Yeah you really can honestly any writers out there. It's like don't ever limit yourself to a genre or a style. I mean you got your own style. Find your style. But that fits any. You can write in any voice.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

Just. You can talk to anyone. If a child walked in, you have that conversation with. If your grand walks in, you have that conversation. If your lover walks in, you have that conversation. Writing's the same as that. You just modulate it to whoever you're talking to.

[David Tennant]

Did that when, when things started to work, when it felt like you were on a. On a rising, things were going well. How giddy did you get? How much did your head get turned?

[Russell T. Davies]

Not much to be honest.

[David Tennant]

Are you pretty good at staying?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, I'm very good at saving. I still save.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Ridiculous savings because I always, always, always save my money so that I never have to rush into a job. I've never had to do a. Just to earn some money. I once heard a story about, I won't name names, a very famous old writer who ended up writing this whole cop show because he didn't have any money in his 60s and 70s. I thought oh that's tragic, what a great writer. And so I've always been wary of that. I heard that story quite early on, so I wasn't wary. Right. Don't become that. So I'm kind of always waiting for it to end as well.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

And equally determined to say fuck that and come up with the next idea.

[David Tennant]

So.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

And also by the time Queer Sport came out, you were already you with your late husband Andrew.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Do you think that was a grounding thing? It was I think young, free and single.

[Russell T. Davies]

I think I could have gone. I could have gone mad with that to be honest. Just.

[David Tennant]

Just.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. And there he was to come home to and that very well Andrew, bless him very much. Yeah. Who kind of wasn't bothered with my television life at all. You met him. Yeah, but yeah, he wasn't impressed by anything. He liked it. He was very happy for me.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

But there's no way he was like starry eyed all the success and cars and nonsense like that.

[David Tennant]

Do you wobble much then? I mean, do you?

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, when I'm writing, yes. Yes.

[David Tennant]

But when, when things are starting to go well, do you? Well you've sort of. You've sort of mentioned that you're never entirely comfortable with knowing that you're sorted.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. And I know. So every show is different. Every show. Every show it's a new cast. Every show it's a new idea and it's very often new genre. So it's literally back to square one every single, single time. And I found stuff that I love that just didn't work. Years and years that had the lowest audience in the world.

[David Tennant]

Critically it was.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes, yes. I'd rather have the viewers though.

[David Tennant]

Right. Would you?

[Russell T. Davies]

To be honest, if it's one or the other, it wasn't even eligible for National Television Award New Drama Award. Not best Drama, just new drama. It was a new drama. It wasn't even on a long list because they had a ratings cut off point. Low wick shoe didn't even exist. How it wasn't even on the peers banker phoned them up to complain they were at. Sorry. The long list is the long list.

[David Tennant]

That keeps your feet on the floor.

[Russell T. Davies]

And then you turn around and two years later it's a sin. A Channel 4 drama. Right Aid wins the National Television Award. Which is the most impossible victory out of everything I've ever won. Ever.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's the best ever because it's voted by the public. That's just glorious. So there we are. I'm a bit eventual person really fighting my enemies.

[David Tennant]

Well, you call that the enemy? There's gotta be an engine in there somewhere. But through all. Through all this, as you're doing all these different shows and through all this, you are nagging away to anyone who will listen about bringing back Doctor who.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Because it's a lifelong desire.

[Russell T. Davies]

I knew it was good enough to come back.

[David Tennant]

And that's what's interesting. Because in 2004, when Dr. WHO was recommissioned and you were at the head of it and you'd always wanted to do it and Jane Tranter trusted you to do was very. There was nothing like it around. Like you said earlier, there was a space.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

How did you know it was going to be okay?

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, it was a lot of people we didn't know. Yeah, we didn't know. And none of us had made anything like it before. But I'd loved it all my life. How could my love be wrong? David? How is that possible? And we were seeing what drama could be, what science fiction drama could be. With Buffy and shows like that, you could see how popular they could be. And so I just hope. No, I hoped and I was backed by an awful lot of support. I mean, they could have said like, let's make four episodes, they said, let's make 13. So. And that was Julie Gardner. It was eight. Originally it was six and then it was eight, and then Julie Gardner pushed it to 13.

[David Tennant]

The Welsh Executive producer, the powerhouse.

[Russell T. Davies]

So that was an enormous show of faith. So it felt supported, even if. And even if it had failed, you didn't feel alone, it didn't feel exposed.

[David Tennant]

But this was where you, as showrunner had to have this surety of thought, didn't you? And you had. Yes, because you must. I imagine you had people going, well, it can't be a police box. Children don't know what that is.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. Daleks especially can't do Daleks.

[David Tennant]

You can't do Daleks.

[Russell T. Davies]

They were being redesigned.

[David Tennant]

They are silly.

[Russell T. Davies]

Redesigned. When they were like flying droids and things like that. Yeah, that was the. That was my best decision, actually, was to stick to the Daleks.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

They weren't allowed to change their proportions at all.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

And people were. Had great designs of, like, they were big and they were brutish and they were armored. They were more like droids. I was just going. They just. You know. You know, David, when you get a toy Dalek, that doesn't look like a Dalek, it's not a Dalek.

[David Tennant]

Yes. It's got to be.

[Russell T. Davies]

When they get the measurements wrong, we get. When you draw it and it doesn't look right, you go, that's not a Dalek. And I just had to believe a simple. That was just an act of faith. Okay. I literally had to believe it.

[David Tennant]

But you knew what bits that did need tweaking, you know, the modeling on the dome and. But I don't just mean the Daleks, though. I mean, within that show, you knew.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

You gave it. Maybe this is just the way you would write it, but you gave it more of a sort of an emotional through line with Rose's character. You stop the Doctor, or being posh, for want of a better word, and.

[Russell T. Davies]

More of an emotional line with him.

[David Tennant]

And more of an emotional line with the Doctor. Yeah. And you made him the last. You got rid of the time loss. So it's not like you just left it absolutely alone. No, but that was. How sure were you of each of those sort of decisions? Was that purely instinctive?

[Russell T. Davies]

It was instinctive. I didn't. It came pouring out of me very quickly. I just. Jane tried to ask me. I did a document saying what I do with it, and they just kind of said yes to it immediately. They were very wonderful at trusting me as sort of saying, you're the expert. The only thing Jane Tranter wondered was she said she thought the Daleks would be in episode one because they're so famous.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And I just know you have them in episode six. So it's a second launch. Yeah, yeah. Halfway through to launch. But. But it was very rare. It was lovely. I was literally trusted. I was brought on board as the expert and they trusted the expert. And it did work. It worked. I kind of. I kind of knew it would. I knew it would work for me. I thought, you can never know whether that's going to catch on with the country, but I kind of thought, no matter what we do, I will sleep easy. I think that's an important thing, actually. You have to. Kind of. About working hard and getting the right people and setting the tone. It's like I got to sleep at night.

[David Tennant]

So we. I. We first met on. I was making your show Casanova.

[Russell T. Davies]

Casanova. Yes, darling.

[David Tennant]

Which was. You'd written before, but was being made in and around Manchester at the same time as the first season of Doctor. And we didn't really get to know each other that well because you were on Card. You were on Cardiff a lot.

[Russell T. Davies]

But we giggle in rehearsals about Doctor who things. You'd be rehearsed in that strange gym that we rehearsed in. Do you remember? Like a kind of gym.

[David Tennant]

Remember going down some stairs, Was it?

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, it was an odd place. Where was that? I couldn't tell you.

[David Tennant]

No, I couldn't tell you.

[Russell T. Davies]

I couldn't tell you. But it was like. There were things like. There were scenes in the Casanova script that had three Doctors in it. So we were going, who? The three Doctors?

[David Tennant]

Yes.

[Russell T. Davies]

Which is a Doctor who story. We giggle at things like that. And you'd say, how's it going? Oh, my God, it's so exciting. And things like that. But, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Tennant]

And then I think it was the second last night of shooting in Manchester. You were up in Manchester and you and Julie Gardner INV around your house. We trapped you and you had a VHS still in the house. A VHS cassette? Yes, still in the house. Still got the VHS player.

[Russell T. Davies]

Still got that house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that house.

[David Tennant]

You had a VHS cassette of Some Air. I think it was episode one and episode six. Six, yeah. Dale.

[Russell T. Davies]

Of course. Dalek. Yes.

[David Tennant]

And they were. One of them was more finished than the other, but it was just to kind of come and see because. Because we talked about it and I thought I was just being invited around for a little sneak peek. You showed me these two episodes was great fun. And then you and Julie, sort of out of the blue, sprang a. Sprang this idea that.

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, my God, Julie said it. I wish I'd said it.

[David Tennant]

Julie did.

[Russell T. Davies]

She led the way saying, would you ever.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

Be interested?

[David Tennant]

How Stage man. I've never asked you this. Stage manager that night.

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, completely. That was the night to find out if you'd be interested. That's the only reason you came out. I would never be in my house for anything. Oh, it was completely. Completely. It was. And, you know, it was entirely possible you could have. I mean, not that you do this, but you could have sat there and watched it and gone, oh, I like the Pyramids of Mars. It's. You shouldn't modernize this. You know, it could have been. That was part of it. To see how much you enjoyed it. And you did. Oh, no, it was. I was gutted that she said it first. I think actual plans for me to say it. Right. And kept it. And you literally said it. And you literally said. There was a pause and you went, I want a coat down to there.

[David Tennant]

I did.

[Russell T. Davies]

And you pointed at your ankle. I did. And I was like, we got it. Your agent will kill us now. We did that. Oh, my God. Gosh, those were early days. There was different world back then. We would literally be murdered by. She'd come around my house with AX.

[David Tennant]

Now, and this was because before Doctor would be on the telly. So I remember my agent, who she's now retired, that agent. She was a brilliant agent, but she was kind of going, what? Because nobody knew what this was going to be.

[Russell T. Davies]

No, no.

[David Tennant]

And. And you, that night, said to me, just go away and just think and be calm.

[Russell T. Davies]

Did I?

[David Tennant]

Because you have to think through all the ramifications of this, presumably because that's something you'd had to go through yourself.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes. And because you love it. Because I knew how much you loved it.

[David Tennant]

Is that because you were recalling the experience of being offered the show?

[Russell T. Davies]

No, but I think it's. I mean, actually, you look back, this hasn't happened, but I suppose technically it's possible to work on it and go off it, you know, when it becomes. I mean. But now we've seen Steve Moffat do. We've seen Chris Chibble do it. We've seen. We've seen actors like Matt Smith, who didn't know Doctor who, come and fall in love with it. So Jodie as well. Yeah, so. So there's more of a history now of. But at the time, it was still you know, and also, it's like. It's. It's. It's you. It's a life changing. It's a life changing part. I remember midway through your run, I was sitting in Cardiff Bay one day having a coffee, and I think it was like a Saturday. And you ran through Cardiff Bay. You must have needed milk from the Tesco with your baseball cap that you were like a hunted ferret. And you scampered through, keeping your head down. I thought I did that to him. It was a terrible moment of like, my God, what a life.

[David Tennant]

Well, but then no one could have known because. Right. I mean, certainly on that night.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's true.

[David Tennant]

I might not have even made it on screen.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

I mean, this is before the series had the same time.

[Russell T. Davies]

You looked and he kind of. I mean, everything's true. Both versions are true at once. Yes. We didn't know it'd be a success, but you look at it and you think, God, if. If that's not a success, what is? I mean, Mark. Gators with zombies in Victoria in London. Of course it's gonna be a success. I mean, come on.

[David Tennant]

And. And it is. I mean, it was a. Yeah. It was the biggest thing on television for years.

[Russell T. Davies]

For years it went on.

[David Tennant]

And you were in the middle of that for five years.

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, I was. You were. I mean, God, yes. And it was bliss, wasn't it? But mad. Bliss.

[David Tennant]

But mad.

[Russell T. Davies]

Very strange. I remember Phil Collinson staggering out of having. Having. He had to get to the National Television Awards with Billy by helicopter. He said it was the worst experience of his life traveling with a helicopter. He'd never been in a helicopter before and never will again since. But that's how mad it was.

[David Tennant]

It was mad we had a helicopter.

[Russell T. Davies]

People in.

[David Tennant]

Five years of. That is a lot. Yes. And you eventually step aside just because you had. Couldn't take any more or.

[Russell T. Davies]

There were other things I wanted to write. Yes. To be honest. That's what I mean. Eventually I ended up writing Cucumber, and that had been building up in my head for years. Yeah. Cucumber was like the next Queerest Folk.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

I mean, because if you think that I was 35 when I wrote Queerest Folk, and that was kind of looking at, you know, some characters. 15. Some characters were in their 20s, but so already at 35, I was heading for 40. So I was looking towards writing about older gay men then. So that was really. So I would have gone to write.

[David Tennant]

So you had to leave to do stuff.

[Russell T. Davies]

Interrupted me and did all sorts of things. All over the place. But that's what I was determined to write next.

[David Tennant]

Well, one of the things you did was move to la.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. With Julian. With James.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, yeah. How big had sort of America and Hollywood loomed from childhood. Had that always felt like the sort of promised land?

[Russell T. Davies]

I'm gonna say not madly, no. And I'd always had a brilliant time working in British television, but. But it was just the adventure of it. So Andrew moved out there as well. But that's when he started to feel ill. That's when he started to get headaches. That's when the headaches turned out to be a brain tumor. So you don't want to be ill in America, do you? It's like we just came back.

[David Tennant]

You just came straight back.

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, we were here anyway. We were here. We're here on a two week holiday. He went for a brain scan. He just had so many headaches and a neighbor, a neighbor of his kind of saved his life because he had eight years to live after this. But because the neighborhood neighbor of his said they don't go to the NHS and he had been to his doctor, they just given him a migraine plan and this neighbor, lovely, lovely woman said, go and have a brain scan that's cost like 230 quid around the corner in the Spire Hospital just to be sure that brain scan. And they literally phoned up the next day and said, where are you? Come in, see us immediately. And we literally never went back to America. We had like, we practically left the kettle on the stove over there. I had all clothes.

[David Tennant]

TV was still on.

[Russell T. Davies]

TV was still on. Yeah, I bet it was. Big TV and clothes and life and books and everything all still over there. Poor Julie Gardner and her husband Julian had a pack up our entire lives and yeah, ship it back over.

[David Tennant]

Because you realized straight away how serious it was. Well, am I right that you knew more than Andrew?

[Russell T. Davies]

I did. He. Well, because he'd been into. He went to his initial diagnosis on his own. I was heading back to la, right. Stopped at Heathrow. He literally phoned me. Heathrow said, come back, it's a brain tumor. So I missed his first, first meeting where. And so by the time I got home, he couldn't remember a word that they'd said. You know, seriously, if ever you're ill, listeners have taken that note, write it down, everything down, or have someone with you to write it down. It's the most important thing of all because your mind just goes whoosh afterwards.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

So I came home. All I knew was that he Had a brain tumor. And I said, what do you mean, what did they say? And bless, everyone's being very lovely and phoning me saying there are benign brain tumors. Damien Timmer was like, I know people with benign brain tumors. It'll be fine. And then after. So he had an appointment for like a week's time. Right, we'll find out then. And then he was rooting about in his bag, he loved his little briefcase. And he got out this piece of paper that said. He went, oh, there we are. The macmillan nurse wrote it down. It's a glioblastoma multiform. And I took it off him. I was like, all right, let me have a look at that. And I went upstairs and typed in glioblastoma multiform. And apologies, triggers. To anyone listening to this, they're not the words you want to hear. That literally says stage four deadly life expectancy of 18 months. Like that. So it's like, wow. So I knew and he didn't. And then he never quite knew. He then had his first operation. He's craniotomy. And then we had a meeting with a consultant and incredibly, all sorts of like, defense mechanisms kicked in with him because you and I would be searching through Google, we'd be searching for those words. And he didn't. He kind of stopped reading things like that. And some little defense mechanism said, don't go and look. And I remember sitting, meeting with his consultant and she said, do you want the full prognosis? And completely out the blue he went, no. Right. And I was like, oh, right, blimey. Which was a surprise. You know, he hadn't discussed that at all. But actually, I think that's one of the things that kept him alive because he lived, you know, with an 18 month deadline. He lived for another eight years. And I think, you know, there were so many nights he had headaches with. So many nights we go to hospital and we go to the A and E at 3 in the morning. But he never thought, this is it. Because he didn't know that prognosis. So he never thought, oh, am I gonna die now? He always thought, oh, I've got a headache. Oh, I've been sick. That's annoying.

[David Tennant]

And again, in that moment, because you were very. You acted very selflessly. I mean, you sort of gave up work, you became his carer.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

And maybe you'd say that was the obvious thing to do, but not everyone would have done that.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Tennant]

But in that moment again, when you're upstairs, there must have been selfish Moments for you. There must have been you going, this. This is.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's interesting.

[David Tennant]

I'm going to lose my life partner and my life is about. His life is about to change. So is mine.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. I'm going to come back to the very simple fact that I mentioned earlier that I save like a bastard. So financially I'd nothing. That's half your decisions, isn't it?

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Life is. Is money. When you go to that. Those cancer hostels you go to, the Christie in Manchester, the biggest cue is that the door that sorts out your benefits because people are there being told, you're going to take a year off work, you're going to die, you could. And sort out people's benefits is the number one thing. I didn't have to worry for a second.

[David Tennant]

So it was a very practical response.

[Russell T. Davies]

That was it. It was practical. I thought. I thought it was easy to give up work, I thought. And I could have given up work for 10 years. It's like I had a lot of money saved. I still have. I do. And I was always saving for a rainy day and I kind of thought, this is the rainy day. Here we are, it's raining.

[David Tennant]

But where did your emotional response, response go?

[Russell T. Davies]

Well, that was. That was. Yes. That was just massive. And I. I hid it, actually. Yeah. Talk to friends and stuff like that. But yes, I couldn't. Yes. Yeah, that's true. No one's ever asked that. Yeah. It just got tucked away. But that's doable, is it?

[David Tennant]

Does that cost you down the line, do you think?

[Russell T. Davies]

I don't think so. I don't think so. Because you traded that for. Weirdly, I still say this is a very strong, strange thing in that we had the best eight years. We've been together for 12 years before that. But those eight years were lovely because we spent every second. I literally stayed at home, lived at home, we sat there, I did all the cooking, I did everything. He took the bins out. That was his one task. I hate doing the bit. To this day, I curse the fact that he's dead, but I have to admit. Where are you? So that was all so. So the. The trade off was straight and it's very strange and. And I think psychologically I still need to work at this. When I think of him now, I still remember those eight years and I need to work much harder at remembering the 12 years interesting beforehand. They've kind of gone well.

[David Tennant]

They must have been very intense in a way that the previous 12.

[Russell T. Davies]

Again, the strongest emotion you remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's as simple as that. It's like. They were certainly vivid years. They were dramatic. It was A and E at 5 in the. There were times. There were times when we'd end up at A and E and 5 in the morning that I never told anyone about because it became boring. People go, how are you? I was like, fine. It was. It would be fine. And they'd. And a nurse would always be a Doctor who fan somewhere. There was. Be a little chat about Daleks. Yeah, fine. Like that. All that kept running underneath your life at the same time. And then he'd be sent home, so.

[David Tennant]

And did you manage to keep resentment at bay?

[Russell T. Davies]

I did, yes. I don't. I don't actually feel. That's interesting. I don't feel any. I think it's hard luck and it's sad that I don't resent that. Not. Not right. She angry about it? Oh, maybe I should be. Is that missing?

[David Tennant]

I don't know. No, that's why I'm asking.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's not there. Interesting. That's not there in my. I'm very sad about it. I don't get angry. I think that's not fair. Yes. In the way that when my mother died, I always hated old women. Ever since then. See an old woman, I'm like, how are you alive?

[David Tennant]

Yes.

[Russell T. Davies]

And my mother isn't.

[David Tennant]

The injustice of it.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, the injustice of it. I felt that. But not resentment, actually. No. Because. Because those eight years were beautiful. Maybe that's it. Maybe they were lovely. We had such a nice time. We almost. We literally, literally never argued.

[David Tennant]

The piece that you were writing, I think when he died, and that was made just after he died, was years and years.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes.

[David Tennant]

Which is probably. Probably the sort of. Most overtly political.

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, yeah.

[David Tennant]

Probably the angriest. Do you think that's linked? Do you think that's where that anger went, maybe?

[Russell T. Davies]

No, because that. I think actually what comes. That is the very last. Remember the ending with Jessica, lovely Jessica Hynes, of course, where she's kind of becoming digital and living forever and she becomes love. She says, I am love. I think that's what came out of Andrew dying was the ending, which I think some people think is a bit of a soft and sentimental ending, but I think it's beautiful. She's so magnificent and I will never forget in my whole life being at the read through when she performed that, where she was sitting under a light like this and she looked ethereal and could put everything into it and you know how magic she is.

[David Tennant]

I love it. Yes, yes, quite.

[Russell T. Davies]

And gosh, I was like, yes, it's.

[David Tennant]

A scene where she sort of comes back from the dead through the miracle.

[Russell T. Davies]

Of the eyes and she's going to live digitally. It's like it's the only afterlife I think we'll ever get.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And I don't think we'll get that. But. So, yeah, the anger wasn't. The anger was anger at the state of the world. Years and years came. It was the only time in my career that anyone's ever actually said to me, what do you really want to write? That was Piers Wenger and Tom Awardser, the RTS or something.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Just having a drink afterwards, said, what do you really want to write? And I went, this. A show about a family living with the news, with the headlines and how they change and how we react to the world and where we're going.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

Gosh.

[Georgia Tennant]

PayPal lets you pay all your pals.

[Russell T. Davies]

Like your graduation gifters. Who's paying for the master mattress topper? You mean the beanbag chair? Aren't we getting a mini fridge? Can we create a pool on PayPal? It lets us collect the money before we buy. Oh, yes, that's smart. Glad we can agree on something.

[David Tennant]

Easily. Pool split and Send Money with PayPal.

[Georgia Tennant]

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[David Tennant]

It's a sin. Was a few years after that, again, was about a different view of gay experience.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Particularly in the 80s and the AIDS epidemic.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

And inevitably, in that, you're writing a law about loss.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

And about death.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, yes, yes.

[David Tennant]

And presumably that was. You were reliving some. Reliving what you lived through in the 80s.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Tennant]

With. With that kind of.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes.

[David Tennant]

Resonance.

[Russell T. Davies]

It is interesting because Andrew died and so I think people kind of thought, oh, are you writing about death now?

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

But actually, I think having grown up in the 80s, where, having known no other life, it was normal for gay men to catch an illness and die. I was 18 in 1981, so I was always there with that virus, through my gayness and my adultness and the discovery of what sex is and what it can be and how you live with it, and that was always there. So actually, if you look at my work, there's always gay men dying. Always, always, always. Even the doctor dies and becomes someone else. But it's like Queer as Folk. Someone drops down dead on a. And cucumber. Someone gets extraordinary. I'D planned cucumber before Andrew got a brain tumor and someone's killed by a blow to the head.

[David Tennant]

Yes.

[Russell T. Davies]

Which is weird. I find that weird. And then it's a sin. Kind of like years and years. Russell Tovey is washed up on the beach, dead, bless him. So it's a sin. It was kind of the one I was always heading towards.

[David Tennant]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Russell T. Davies]

The actual deaths, the real ones, as opposed to fictional ones I made up heading that way.

[David Tennant]

So it was almost the most autobiographical thing you've.

[Russell T. Davies]

I suppose. Well, I mean, I was lucky in the. In that I'm not HIV positive and, and, and, and obviously I had friends who died of aids. So, yes, it is autobiographical in that I didn't live in London. I. I felt it had to be set in London. So there's a big lot of big differences. But sure, at the same time, it's very much drawn my friends and that whole.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

That youth theater I was talking about, they were amongst the people who died and, and. And all the people who went to London, they. In a flat they called the Pink Palace. They all worked in the West End, they all got jobs in the choruses and their friends started dying.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And what the extraordinary thing about the AIDS crisis is that. Is that you actors, it's like it's the West End actors amongst the first to politicize themselves and to start marching and to start demanding change. It was the West End.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Because that's why they're still all those West End and Broadway charities they're still running. But they were amongst the first to sort of say, we're not putting up with this.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

Because it was one of the most dense populations of gay men. You know, those chorus boys would vanish. Yeah. Michael Ball tells stories about this still. Everyone does. Everyone who McKellen does, they would know people who would simply go home and vanish. And they were amongst the first to start saying, we're not putting up with this, or, we need money and it needs help, it needs support. So an extraordinary thing. Extraordinary thing for that community to raise up its arms in protest. Wonderful, wonderful work was done. That's true.

[David Tennant]

An extraordinary. But punches through in a way that drama rarely does nowadays. And was.

[Russell T. Davies]

Gorgeous cast. What about that cast?

[David Tennant]

Gorgeous cast. But Lydia and. Heartbreaking. I mean, everyone, you know, sort of sobbed their way through.

[Russell T. Davies]

It was a beautiful strength of emotion Again. See, the stronger you get there. I was Juno the Bacog, doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With something real as opposed to. Yeah.

[David Tennant]

And after that, and the plaudits of that Interestingly, back I went. You choose to go back to Doctor who.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Tennant]

Which was probably not what people imagined you would do.

[Russell T. Davies]

No.

[David Tennant]

Did it just feel like an obvious thing for you to do, though?

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, imagine me telling my agent that was not.

[David Tennant]

Well, what did they say?

[Russell T. Davies]

Well. And no, she is lovely and she'd let me do anything. There was a deep breath of, like, what? And it was one of those moments in my career I could have done anything. Yeah. But I love Doctor who.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And there was already a move from the BBC to shift it to a streamer. I kind of thinking it might need protecting. And they very honestly said that to me. They said, we need. We're gonna need a producer who can deal with a thousand executives, you know, which is what?

[David Tennant]

Because it couldn't have existed without some money from a streamer. Because that's the world we're in.

[Russell T. Davies]

That's. Well, that's. They want. That's what they wanted. It's not just. That's the world they're in. They. Piers Wenger genuinely thought he deserves that budget.

[David Tennant]

He was head of BBC Drama.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah, he was head of BBC Drama. And you're looking at all your Stranger Things and all your. All your Star wars shows and your Marvel shows and Famous said, it should look like that. Yeah, it deserves to look like that.

[David Tennant]

When we. Because we left together back in 2009, 2010, at the end of that first run, the last line that you wrote, the last line that I said was, I don't want to go. Which felt very true. And yet also we were ready to go, but we both ended up going back. You're still there.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yes, I know. What?

[David Tennant]

How could you ever really imagine setting it down and closing the door?

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, yes. I mean, when I do it next, I won't go back a third time. For God's sake. That would be insane. So. Yeah.

[David Tennant]

Well, you never. You didn't think you'd go back a second time.

[Russell T. Davies]

Very true. But I'm not getting younger, darling. My God. And I will need to slow down at some point, so. No, that'll come and I'll just. But you don't sound. Read Doctor who magazine. I've just been reading the next week. Next month's Doctor who magazine is like a 25 page page interview with Philip Hinchcliffe and I've just been reading that and it's by Ben Cook and it's glorious.

[David Tennant]

Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

So am I putting down Doctor who? Anytime. I'll never put it down completely. I will always be reading a 25 page interview with a former producer.

[David Tennant]

Because.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah.

[David Tennant]

You're contemplating leaving behind the thing that sort of set the fire in the first place there. Right.

[Russell T. Davies]

Yeah. Except you never quite leave it back. It's still. It'll still be on. Like when we left, it was still on and it was still on.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, sure.

[Russell T. Davies]

So it's. It's. It's. It. You feel like that party's still going.

[David Tennant]

Do you feel like part of what you have to do now is put your successor in place to.

[Russell T. Davies]

I suppose. I mean, last. I mean, we were so lucky. Last time. It was Steven Moffat. That. That. That was. That wasn't even a day's work. It was like. Right, off you go. Yeah. So, yeah, there's thinking about. There's conversations about that, but it's hard. It's a tricky one.

[David Tennant]

Yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

But they better exist. I'm not going to die in that.

[David Tennant]

Can't end here.

[Russell T. Davies]

Exactly. Dead to the desk. That'd be such the cliche. Would kill me. Oh, my God. Please don't let me down.

[David Tennant]

It would be a great story, though, wouldn't it?

[Russell T. Davies]

Okay, yeah. I'll trade that.

[David Tennant]

So Steven Buffett can write it.

[Russell T. Davies]

Oh, my God. Like a biopic.

[David Tennant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Russell T. Davies]

And he died. Who'd play you? Don't answer that. Camille Kajuri, Probably Tim Robbins. Someone once said, tim Robinson play you.

[David Tennant]

That's an excellent.

[Russell T. Davies]

You know, I looked at him. Oh, that makes sense, actually.

[David Tennant]

That's a great.

[Russell T. Davies]

I'll take that.

[David Tennant]

Yeah. Well, Russell, on that.

[Russell T. Davies]

Have we been speaking for, like, five hours?

[David Tennant]

I think we have done quite a lot. We should probably still.

[Russell T. Davies]

It's gonna be edited down to like, hello, goodbye.

[David Tennant]

Yeah. It'll be a sharp five.

[Russell T. Davies]

Swansea, Cardiff. Thank you.

[David Tennant]

It'll be a tight ten. Yeah. Russell, thanks for doing this.

[Russell T. Davies]

I love this. We never get to talk like this.

[David Tennant]

I know.

[Russell T. Davies]

Lovely.

[David Tennant]

We could have done another two hours. We've all got places. Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Russell T. Davies]

Thank you. You.

[David Tennant]

David Tennant does a podcast with is a Sony Music Entertainment and no Mystery production produced by Matt Smith. The assistant producer was Ryan Prescott. The sound engineer was Josh Gibbs. The executive producers are Alex Lawless, Sarah Camlett and Georgia Tennant. Next time the Doctor walked me over for the birth, we were there, had the birth. I went, congratulations, see you later. And I went back to bed because I couldn't. I couldn't even. I could barely stand up.