A lot of pressure comes with playing a famous character. While Peter Capaldi was aware of that when he joined Doctor Who, he recently admitted one surprising lesson he had to learn during his time as the Twelfth Doctor.
As a guest on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg (watch the Instagram reel here, via Radio Times), Capaldi was asked if he thought he left the show too early. He played the character from 2014 to 2017, taking over for Matt Smith and then leaving after regenerating as Jodie Whittaker’s version of the character. He took a long pause, then said he had a little regret, because “it’s great fun” starring on Doctor Who. Later in the interview, he elaborated on that: “It’s nice to sit in the TARDIS; it’s nice to go to work and blow up Daleks. That’s fun!”
However, “The pressure of it is quite intense,” he admitted.
“You’re sort of on all the time, and you don’t want to disappoint anyone because, even though I’m not [the Doctor], if people are meeting me, they’d rather meet the version of me that is … so you try not to let them down,” Capaldi explained.
That had some surprising effects on Capaldi’s private life, as it turns out. “That was one of the big changes in my life, I guess … I’m quite miserable, really, but I thought, ‘you can’t be miserable if you’re Doctor Who.’ You would disappoint people. So I had to become cheerful all the time!”
No word if other Time Lords throughout the years felt the same pressure—Ncuti Gatwa sure seems like someone who’s generally “on” all the time anyway—but right now we’d just be thrilled to know who the next Doctor is going to be. It’s fun, people!
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