Yahoo News Eccleston "lost faith" in Dr Who team before quitting
Christopher Eccleston is speaking more openly than ever before about the behind-the-scenes falling-out that led to his departure from Doctor Who.
The Ninth Doctor actor has always been vague about the reasoning for leaving the BBC One science fiction series after only a single season, fuelling countless rumours about disharmony on-set and disagreements between Eccleston and showrunner Russell T Davies.
Eccleston has finally acknowledged that he did fall out with Davies and other members of staff in a new Radio Times interview, and admitted that both sides "lost faith" in their ability to continue working together.
"My relationship with my three immediate superiors – the showrunner, the producer and co-producer – broke down irreparably during the first block of filming and it never recovered," he said.
"They lost trust in me, and I lost faith and trust and belief in them."
He later acknowledged: "Some of my anger about the situation came from my own insecurity. They employed somebody [as The Doctor] who was not a natural light comedian.
"Billie [Piper], who we know was and is brilliant, was very, very nervous and very, very inexperienced. So, you had that, and then you had me. Very, very experienced, possibly the most experienced on it, but out of my comfort zone."
The experience was apparently so "stressful" that Eccleston believes that he "will never have" a working relationship again with Russell T Davies, with whom he'd collaborated on the biblical drama series The Second Coming before making Doctor Who.
(Russell T Davies)
Eccleston also comes clean to the Radio Times about why he refused to speak about Doctor Who in interviews until recently, disclosing that he'd made a promise to Davies that he "wouldn't do anything to damage the show" when he left.
"But they did things to damage me. I didn't criticise anybody," he argued.
Last week, Eccleston suggested that his acrimonious departure from Doctor Who after the first series in 2005 nearly derailed his entire career.
"I gave them a hit show and I left with dignity and then they put me on a blacklist," he alleged. "I was carrying my own insecurities as it was something I had never done before and then I was abandoned, vilified in the tabloid press and blacklisted.
"I was told by my agent at the time, 'The BBC regime is against you. You're going to have to get out of the country and wait for regime change.'"
Eccleston has since gone on to work with the BBC on the critically-acclaimed drama series The A Word. Digital Spy has reached out to Russell T Davies' spokesperson and a representative for the BBC for comment on Christopher Eccleston's remarks.
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