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Tom Baker 'shunned' while making 50th anniversary episode of 'Doctor Who'

Tom Baker (Credit: BBC)
Tom Baker (Credit: BBC)

Tom Baker has described how he felt shunned and unappreciated during the filming of the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who.

Baker returned for a cameo as The Curator in the episode, called The Day of the Doctor, alongside many of the other former Doctors, including Matt Smith, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

But as Baker tells it, despite him being one of the most beloved actors to have played the role among fans, the showmakers were less welcoming.

“Matt Smith is a darling young man – he made me very welcome,” he told Digital Spy.

“[But] he was the only one who welcomed me – I drove through the night to Cardiff, and Matt Smith came seeking me out, so full of joy and so happy to see me!

“He made it very, very easy acting with him, and I’m so glad he’s going on to tumultuous success. Nobody else bothered with me at all. I was a bit nettled about that.

Tom Baker and Matt Smith (Credit: BBC)
Tom Baker and Matt Smith (Credit: BBC)

“They didn’t have Matt’s warmth. That’s what he’s good at, warmth… absolutely wonderful, and there’s not much of him – he’s sort of lean, and exudes this warmth.”

And this isn’t his only axe to grind, with regards his most famous role.

He’s also spoken about the producer of the show who caused to him to quit after seven years.

Baker said that the show’s boss John Nathan-Turner left him feeling ‘diminished’.

“I didn’t like his approach to anything very much,” he went on. “His approach as a producer, to the scripts and to my performance… he managed somehow – how terrible – to diminish me.

“He made assumptions about how I should do things, or what lines meant, or how it should be shot, which diminished me, and I found that unbearable.

“He nudged me towards the realisation it [Doctor Who] had run its course and I should go somewhere else. I think, in a way, when I said when I wanted to go, he was relieved, that he wouldn’t have to have that fight. He could get his stamp on it.

“There was a lot of tension [before that]. But as soon as I resigned, everything was perfect – he adored me, because he’d won I suppose.”

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