David Tennant has revealed that, as much fun as it is for viewers trying to work out the plot twists of hit series ‘Broadchurch’, he finds the secrecy around the scripts “a bloody nightmare”.
David plays DI Alec Hardy in the show, whose third and final series is set to debut next Monday. Because of the notorious levels of security around the scripts, all the scripts are watermarked. In addition, David reveals all the actors are given individual passwords to access different chapters - which becomes a problem when he forgets his.
“Everyone found it rather exhausting,” David Tennant tells Radio Times. “We were all issued with different passwords for different things. So new bits of script would come through and you’d forget what your password was and have to phone somebody up and prove it was you.
“That drove me mad, if I’m honest. I’d phone up the office and go, ‘I need it on paper, I can’t cope!’”
In addition, on the actors’ call-sheets for each shoot, they discovered that characters had been misnamed or give numbers instead. None of the actors was given the final script, so that the storyline could be kept secret.
“So, yeah,” says Tennant, “there was a recognisable amount of security. Honestly, it was a nightmare.”
‘Broadchurch’s third series tells a different story from its preceding two. In the first episode, DI Hardy and DS Miller (Olivia Colman) are reunited to investigate a violent sexual assault on a local woman Trish Winterman, played by former ‘Coronation Street’ actress Julie Hesmondhalgh, and familiar faces Lennie Henry, Roy Hudd and Sarah Parish will also be joining the cast.
‘Broadchurch’ Series 3 begins on Monday 27 February at 9pm on ITV. Read the full interview in next week’s edition of Radio Times, on sale now.