A QUESTION FOR PETER CAPALDI
This past spring Peter Capaldi was a guest at the Regeneration Who 4 convention in Baltimore MD. If I got an opportunity to ask him a question, I wanted it to be a good one — a question that I hoped he'd find interesting to answer as well as one that would interest the other people in the room.
I've always been fascinated by Capaldi's physical portrayal of the Doctor. So I thought — I’ll formulate a question about his physicality as an actor: How he developed his portrayal of the Doctor. Why he felt that the brew of elegance & awkwardness he hit on was who his Doctor was.
"I didn't get in to drama school they said: You're too big, Your eyebrows are too active, Your face expresses too much."
That’s what Peter Capaldi was told when he auditioned for RADA. Decades later, when he was in his forties, he realized that he should:
Celebrate being different. In the end, my Glasgow accent didn’t matter. The fact I was different would provide me with the employment I’ve had. Embrace everything. My mother said: “If you fell in the Clyde you’d come out with fish in your pocket."
From the very first moment we met Capaldi’s Doctor in "Deep Breath," his debut episode, his portrayal was filled with vitality & with vigor. His posture & poses were quite distinctive, always well-defined & forceful. He utilized an imaginative range of hand & arm gestures that complemented & elaborated on the expressions of his very expressive face. Every moment & gesture he made seemed finely honed & beautifully timed to his line delivery.
The Twelfth Doctor Emerges | Deep Breath | Doctor Who | BBC https://youtu.be/V6e7jHwIok8
Capaldi was constantly on the move, covering every inch of the space available to him inside the frame. I've heard Rachel Talalay say that he preferred to be moving around the set when he was delivering lines ~ particularly during his Big Speeches ~ which was why so many of his scenes were done as medium shots &/or fluid tracking shots. Those Big Speeches are as much riveting dance performances as they are marvelous monologues reminiscent of tour de force solos in a classic ballet or play.
The Doctor's Speech | The Zygon Inversion | Doctor Who https://youtu.be/BJP9o4BEziI
Sometimes Capaldi turned a moment of drama or comedy into a duet with the kind of spatial dynamic that you see between two tango partners. Most frequently his dance partner was Missy ~ like the encounter between them in "Dark Water" that ends with a kiss on his nose...
Missy Kisses The Doctor | Dark Water | Doctor Who https://youtu.be/6UsUSx8rfsc
...and the moment in "The Doctor Falls" when they subtly advance & retreat, briefly grasping hands.
"Where I Fall" Speech | The Doctor Falls | Doctor Who | BBC https://youtu.be/xnouj9Yz-Gs
It was quite marvelous to watch Capaldi manipulate props. It is one of the outstanding things about his performance in "Heaven Sent." Spade, spoon, skull, flower...
Breaking The Wall | Heaven Sent | Doctor Who | BBC https://youtu.be/sl9pTDK8PAk
...trousers, jacket, waistcoat, shirt, boots — every object was held with precise intent and his gestures echoed in the subsequent revelations of what each object meant to the unfolding drama and resolution of the episode's story.
"What do you think of the new look? I was hoping for minimalism, but I think I came out with magician."
From the moment he showed off the red silk lining of his coat, I was struck by how Capaldi incorporated into his performance the actions of putting on his coat, buttoning his shirt & adjusting its cuffs.
In his hands, those everyday actions, meticulously rendered, sometimes delineated a shift in tone — always signaling the sombre, determination of a Time Lord whose crisp, buttoned-up to the top white shirts and well-fitted jackets were his armour. Never truer and never more heart-rending than at the end of "Hell Bent," when, after coming the long way round to his home world, he leaves it behind again, this time bereft of companionship as well as memory.
Doctor Who Season 9 - The Doctor and the TARDIS Reunite https://youtu.be/DO92cm1Kf_s
One of the things that always interested me the most about Capaldi's physicality, his gestures and his movement through space, is that despite the jokes about how oddly he runs — as Bill Potts, his Season 10 companion, pointed out, he runs "like a penguin with it's arse on fire" —
Twelve - The Penguin With Its Arse on Fire! || Doctor Who https://youtu.be/0mj2CotG8O4
Capaldi is actually a very graceful mover. He is quite as elegant as the well-tailored clothes he wore throughout Season 8 and returned to at the end of Season 9 as well as during Season 10. There's an astonishing moment at the beginning of "Thin Ice" when he steps out of the TARDIS and smoothly pivots around, extending his hand to Bill as she steps out for the first time into the past. Every time I watch that moment, I marvel at how someone who has, throughout his acting career, run in the most ungainly fashion I've ever seen a person run, can be the same person who pivots as nimbly as the best basketball players I've ever seen on a court.
Walking on the River Thames | Thin Ice | Doctor Who | BBC https://youtu.be/4VOr-2K9PN4
Capaldi's Doctor was someone who brought a spoon to a sword fight in"Robot of Sherwood” and wielded it with as much agility as he did a pratfall in"Deep Breath," and with as much nimbleness as he used a piece of chalk to draw in "Listen," "The Pilot" and "Oxygen." His gestures, movement & face as much as his voice expressed the emotional tone of a scene, be it dramatic or comic.
The Doctor Fights Robin Hood | Robot of Sherwood | Doctor Who https://youtu.be/DnedB2-WoTM
I noticed that whenever Capaldi drew a caricature of himself as the Doctor, the figure was always spindly and precariously balanced.
I thought if those figures were animated, they'd run in the same ungainly fashion as his Doctor and other characters he has portrayed throughout his career. I wondered why he draws himself like that as it represents only this one odd characteristic of his physicality ~ his seeming inability to run gracefully.
Or is it his ability to run awkwardly? Perhaps it's a reminder, to himself & to us, that what we think are our faults can become our attributes, if only we can be brave enough to celebrate and embrace them. Then perhaps we will also find that we'll come out with fish in our pocket if we fall into the Clyde.
I really don't know whether there is any question I could have asked Capaldi at ReGeneration Who that he might have found remotely interesting to answer — least of all a question about how he embodied the persona of a character that is not his anymore. I suppose that what I really wanted to do is thank him and tell him that I know for sure that his pockets are always full of fish.
Photo Credits: “Peter Capaldi in Motion” Design by Stuart Manning | Portrait of Peter Capaldi by Paul Stuart, National Portrait Gallery, London UK || All clips are property of the BBC. No copyright infringement intended.