David Tennant has revealed he was in the running for the role of James Bond alongside Daniel Craig but only found out years later.
Craig starred in the last five 007 films, first appearing in Casino Royale in 2006 and ending his run with No Time To Die in 2021.
Speaking to the Acting For Others podcast, Doctor Who star Tennant said he recently discovered that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson were at one point considering him to play the fictional secret service agent.
He recalled: “I never believed I had, until I worked with a director recently who had worked with the Broccolis, who said ‘Yeah, you were on the list that time’.
“I was like ‘What time? What are you talking about?’ He went ‘Yeah, the last time’.
“I suppose it must have been Daniel Craig; before that I would have been a child.”
The 51-year-old Scottish actor added: “I think it was quite a long list and I don’t think I was ever very near the top of it. But apparently so.”
Following Craig’s swan song performance as 007 in No Time To Die, there has been lots of speculation about who will take over, with Rege-Jean Page, Henry Cavill and James Norton among the bookies’ contenders.
Asked if he wonders what his life would have been like if he had got the role, Tennant said: “I think it’s probably a bit of a game-changer, that level of celebrity.”
He himself was catapulted to widespread recognition when he stepped into the Tardis in 2005 to play the 10th Time Lord, with his final Doctor Who episode airing on New Year’s Day in 2010.
The actor said he did experience a loss of anonymity after joining the sci-fi series, saying: “It was a different scale to anything I’d done before in terms of just the general public being aware of you.
“You can sort of be known in the industry and there’s a whole thing where you’re suddenly in people’s living rooms and they have a kind of ownership of you, in a way.
“And it’s a multifaceted experience, and lots of it is very nice, but there are parts of it where you just can’t really anticipate what that feels like, I think.”
Tennant will be returning to the show alongside Catherine Tate, who played his companion, Donna Noble, in scenes due to air next year to coincide with the series’ 60th anniversary celebrations.
