This year’s Gallifrey One, the 30th annual Doctor Who convention, took place at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott February 14-17, 2019. Following John Barrowman’s panel on Saturday, February 16, was Catherine Tate’s panel. Catherine Tate is known to Whovians as Donna Noble, one of the Tenth Doctor’s companions. This was Catherine’s first appearance at Gallifrey One.
John Barrowman briefly made his way back on stage to introduce Catherine Tate, whom he playfully referred to as “the b*tch who beat me” — referring to how she had crashed his panel and declared herself the winner of their competition for who could collect the most ribbons at Gallifrey One. She thanked everyone who gave her a ribbon and announced that her badge with her roll of ribbons would be auctioned off for charity.
Catherine started things off by going out into the crowd to try to figure out who came from the farthest. The first person she asked came from Claremont, California — about a 40 minute drive. But she soon found a winner: Sydney, Australia.
Then she went right into audience Q&A.
Catherine admitted that she doesn’t know much about sci-fi. She recalled when she appeared at her first convention, she didn’t know that people would be dressed as her character, and she had to be reminded of the outfits she wore. She hadn’t realized at first that the people in wedding dresses were dressed as her!
As for Catherine’s favorite Doctor Who episode, it was Turn Left. She had begun to realize that it was the beginning of the end for Donna, and it was a very powerful storyline.
One audience member simply asked Catherine why she’s so awesome. Her answer? “Because I’m ginger, baby.”
When asked if she remembered any pranks that were pulled between the Doctor Who and Torchwood cast members when they shared sets, Catherine said that she didn’t recall much besides John Barrowman’s bare butt! She joked that the Doctor Who cast was much more professional than that of Torchwood.
Catherine also spoke about how easy it was to slip back into her character for the radio dramas, even though it had been several years since she had played the character. Additionally, she revealed that recently she had done a few more episodes where she got back together with the actors who played her grandfather and her mother, as well as David Tennant.
A question came up about the Children in Need video that she and David Tennant and had done together. Catherine spoke about how she usually goes off of the crowd to gauge how far to take things in live situations, but that it’s more difficult when you’re working with another actor. However, she praised how brilliant of an actor that David Tennant is, saying that the two were able to play off of each other flawlessly, so much so that they were able to do that video in just one take! She pointed out that there is a part in the video where David didn’t know she was going to say a certain line (by way of background, she explained that there’s a Scottish song — remember, David Tennant is Scottish — that goes “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road, and we’ll meet together in the end,” and this was the line she said), and if you look closely you could tell that he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. She commented that this was a testament to how good of an actor he is, and said that he is her favorite person to work with.
We also learned that Donna was originally only meant to be in one episode. Catherine recalled when she first got the script, and how she had never worked on a show so secretive before that it would go to such lengths as to print each person’s name on the script so that if it got leaked, then you would know where the leak came from. She remembered that the first line of her script read “Donna is suspended 100 feet in the air in a spider’s web wearing a wedding dress” and she knew this was something she wanted to be a part of. Then a year later she got a call asking if she wanted to come back, and she did.
Another question was what it was like working on episodes with digital characters, such as wasp in The Unicorn and the Wasp, and the Adipose. Catherine revealed that they were tennis balls on a stick. She couldn’t answer whether she liked how they turned out on screen because she doesn’t actually watch things that she’s in.
There were times when Catherine would look at the script and not really know what was going on, other than the emotional connections. In fact, for the first week and half she didn’t realize that real people played the Sontarans — she thought they were electronic and remote controlled! Further, she brought up how she didn’t know why the Daleks were considered so terrifying, and rather she thought that the Vashta Nerada in Silence in the Library were the most terrifying thing to come out of Doctor Who because they could be in any shadow. Catherine recalled how she enjoyed working with Alex Kingston on that episode, and how they would go down to the bar and play pub trivia, where Alex was the leader of their team. She couldn’t quite remember the name of their team, but said that it was something like “The River Song-ettes” or something along those lines.
When an audience asked Catherine how she got such great hair, Catherine replied, “My mommy gave it to me!”
Doctor Who wasn’t the only subject that came up, as an audience member asked about The Catherine Tate Show. Catherine answered that of all the characters she played on the show, the ones closest to her heart are Lauren, who is the teenager that she once was, and Nan. She also answered how she comes up with her characters: she steals people’s personalities. Catherine pointed out that the way you get away with it is that you change their physical appearance, because nobody recognizes themselves if they look different. For example, the Screaming Woman character is based on her own mother. But when Catherine watched the sketch with her mother, and told her mother that it was based on her, her mother didn’t believe it, because the character had different hair!
Additionally, she talked about working on The Office, and told us that her favorite thing to come out of that experience is her friendship with Craig Robinson. She told us about how he is always joking. One day she was about to leave for Fan Expo in Toronto, and she got a call from him asking what she was doing, and she told him where she was going, to which he replied he was going to Fan Expo too. She didn’t believe him. Then when she got to the airport and saw him in the lounge, he again told her that he was going to Fan Expo. She still didn’t believe him. He went so far as to even get on the plane with her, and she turned to him and made sure he knew that it was going to Toronto. He said he knew, and again told her that he was going to Fan Expo too. When she went to use the restroom, the pilot came out to say hello to her and said that he was a fan of The Office, to which she informed him that Craig Robinson was on the plane as well. The pilot replied, “I know, he’s going to Fan Expo too.” At that point, she marched down the aisle back to him and exclaimed, “You are going to Fan Expo!”
Catherine poked fun at the American use of the word “restroom” or “bathroom” whereas across the pond they refer to it as the “loo” or the “ladies.” She recalled the first time she came to the U.S. and checked into her hotel in Hollywood, she asked the clerk where she could find the “ladies” — to which the clerk asked, “Which ones?” Catherine responded saying, “The nearest ones.” There was a group of women in the lobby, so the clerk pointed her in that direction. Catherine headed that way, confused, saying, “I don’t see them,” to which the frustrated clerk replied, “They’re right there!” At that point Catherine figured each of them thought they were just messing with the other.
One audience member brought up the Doctor Who Deathmatch panel, wherein the best Doctor Who companion would be decided, and told her that Donna was going to be the companion to beat. Catherine agreed, pointing out that in the episode Journey’s End, Doctor Donna became the first female Doctor, so that was something she had going for her. The audience member asked Catherine which companion she thought would be a strong contender against Donna. Catherine confessed that this was a tough question for her to answer, because she doesn’t know who all the other companions are! The only ones she knew were Billie Piper, who played Rose Tyler, and Sarah Jane Smith, because those are the ones that she worked with.
The quality that Catherine loved most about Donna was that she wasn’t in love with the Doctor. She liked that the character broke the cyclical nature of the companion being in love with the Doctor and thought that it made it much more interesting for her to play this character.
As for directing, Catherine has directed before, but has realized she is a terrible director — especially when it comes to directing something she has written, because she is a “control freak” and she’ll tell people, “Just do it how I would do it” or “Do it like this, it’ll be funnier,” which doesn’t go over well with the actors. She prefers editing.
Another question was about the scene where Donna jumps from the cab into the flying TARDIS. While filming, she thought it was going to look terrible. But back then, she was still new to the show. They were filming piecemeal, so some of it was shot in the studio, where the TARDIS was located, and with a wind machine, while some of it was shot on a motorway, and seemed scary. But she pointed out that this is why she likes editing so much, because that’s where you can bring everything together, and that Doctor Who has a great special effects team.
Catherine also talked a bit about Duck Tales, to which both she and David Tennant lend their voices — though from different locations and times. She talked about how she did an overexaggerated Scottish accent, thinking it would never make it in, but the crew in Los Angeles thought it sounded just like David Tennant. So Catherine commented that she can’t wait for him to hear it.
She went on to talk about the evolution of Donna’s character and how the character started out as raw, uncensored, unsophisticated, and obnoxious, but that changed over time. Catherine thought that Donna first started to evolve when she was touched by the Ood (which Catherine had called “the Yeti men” for awhile). She praised Russell T. Davies’ writing which gradually led Donna to become wise, as well as sensitive to her feelings. However, she also thought it was a great tragedy that Donna went through this evolution but in the end was brought right back to where she started, with no memory of what she had been through.
For the final question, Catherine had the young man come up on stage and sit on the couch. He had a ribbon he wanted to give her, and asked her to read it aloud, which she obliged: “I was tallywacked by John Barrowman at Gally 2015.”
With that, the panel ran out of time. This was our first time ever seeing Catherine Tate, and she did not disappoint! She was hilarious and so much fun. Stay tuned for more articles about our experience at Gallifrey One 2019!
Click here to read about what we did the rest of our Saturday evening at Gallifrey One 2019 >>
You can view more of our photos of Catherine Tate at Gallifrey One 2019 below.
