We’re lucky to have gotten thirteen – fourteen, if you include John Hurt – fantastic actors to play the Doctor over the past fifty plus years of Doctor Who, but it’s always intriguing to think about the Time Lords that never were, those actors that came close to winning one of the most coveted roles on TV but didn’t eventually end up piloting the TARDIS.
Now, we can add one more name to that list, as Men in Black International‘s Rafe Spall’s revealed he once came “quite close” to nabbing the part of the Doctor at one point. Speaking on tonight’s episode of Sky’s There’s Something About Movies, the actor – son of Harry Potter star Timothy Spall – admitted that it was his own loose lips that lost him the job.
“I got quite close to being Doctor Who. But they said to me ‘Right, this is top secret, there’s one condition when you come in to be Doctor Who, you can’t tell a soul.'”
Unfortunately for the actor, he didn’t take that rule on board and couldn’t help but tell his loved ones about the awesome role he was up for. And that was that.
“I told everyone. I told literally everyone that I knew. It got back to them. People from Doctor Who were calling up my agent saying, ‘We’ve heard Rafe has been blabbing his mouth off, that’s it, it’s done.'”
Spall, also known for his turns in Shaun of the Dead and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, elected not to say which actor eventually got the part. However, the best guess would probably be either David Tennant or Matt Smith, going by the trajectory of Spall’s career.
Those are two of the finest Doctors ever, so it’s hard to feel things didn’t work out for the best, but it would have been interesting to see Spall on the show. Not that he’s bound to guest star on Doctor Who any time soon, what with his Mark Ruffalo-level secret-spilling.
