Actor speaks of ‘huge responsibility’ of making new TV drama on learning disability

David Tennant has said he felt a huge sense of responsibility to do justice to his new series about raising a child with a learning disability.

The former Doctor Who plays the father of nine-year-old Rosie in autobiographical comedy drama There She Goes from writer Shaun Pye, whose daughter was born with a rare chromosomal disease in 2006.

Tennant, 47, told Radio Times magazine: “The writing was so real, so touching and so unexpected.

“It was unlike anything I’d read before.

“It’s such raw, human stuff, I felt a huge responsibility, especially with Shaun in the room when we did the read-through.”

Actress Jessica Hynes plays Rosie’s mother in the programme.

Hynes and Tennant previously worked together on Doctor Who.

“I know David so well,” said the actress. “That makes it very easy for us to slip into the back-and-forth that Shaun sets up between us.”

Father-of-four Tennant said working on the BBC series made him think about the way he raises his own children.

“I defy anyone with children not to see moments of what it’s like to be a parent within the series,” he said.

“It makes you wonder how you’d react in that particular set of circumstances, of course, but it also makes you wonder about the ways you might have reacted in your own life as a parent, about the times you got it wrong and the times you got it right.”

This week’s Radio Times is out on Tuesday.

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