After the hugely popular reaction to the recent minisode, DWO caught up with The 8th Doctor, Paul McGann, for an exclusive video interview.

Speaking to DWO Editor, Seb J. Brook, Paul talks about The Night Of The Doctor, keeping secrets, future appearances, his costume and more!

Below is a transcript of the interview, and you can watch the video itself at the bottom:

Obviously it’s great to see you back on our screens again, how hard was it keeping it a secret?

That was tough, keeping it a secret! What’s actually slightly disappointing is when you realise you can’t keep a secret now. And you know it should have gone out next week, but they had to put it out this week because someone was about to put it out.

When did you film it?

We shot it in May.

That’s a long time to keep a secret!

Yeh, it wasn’t easy. I mean a couple of mates knew - family knew, and I’m pretty good at keeping a secret, but of course so many people work on something, you know, technicians and everybody else, and publicity people, you know, I’m not pointing the finger, except I’m saying, somewhere along the line, someone couldn’t resist pressing send.

A couple of days ago we were seeing still pictures from the episode going out before it had gone out, so Steven Moffat presumably thought “I’ve gotta do something”, so we released it.

But it all worked out ok in the end, didn’t it?

All’s well that ends well! But also, I was getting tweets back in July, and there were people saying things that they could only have known - so you can’t keep a secret!

Well one of the big questions we’re getting at the moment is that it’s been even more popular that even the fans thought it would be. It had everything they wanted for the past 6 years of Doctor Who stories in about 6 minutes…

…Well yeh and also, I suppose, it reconciled a narrative gap.

It did, yeh, definitely, but this is the thing, people are wanting more now…

…people are always want more! There are people here today saying “when are you gonna do a series”

Well that’s the thing, they want to know if you were offered to do a mini series would you do a mini series? 

Well, it’s like with the mini episode - if they send you the script and it’s good, you’ll do it. So, you know, these things are only as good as the material. So the real question is if the material was good enough and if you were available, you’d do it - cos it’s a Who!

Now you just had a birthday didn’t you?

On that day!

On that day! I mean, what a great present?!

So I regard it as Steven Moffat’s birthday present to me!

That’s great! So I imagine we’re going to have an action figure of you now in your new attire!

That costume in the mini episode, I think looks cool. Proper Time Lord!

It was an evolution of the one you had on-screen in the 1996 TV Movie.

Yeh…distressed, as they used to say in retail! Yeh, yeh, distressed! Yeh, it looked good, I thought.

Fans are saying the way you picked up The Doctor was seamless, you’ve evolved since doing the Big Finish stuff and it’s almost as if we’ve had three series of you on screen anyway because your Doctor has evolved through the audios.

Well I think that’s fair. Since doing the Big Finish’s, of course, I’ve been in it, I’ve still been part of things, so in a way it was easy - I’m glad you think it was seamless. Still, having said that, going on screen is a whole different thing.

Was it a bit surreal?

Yeh! Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss was there, a few people were there, you know, and everyone’s a fan as well, of course, and everyone was really excited to see it. (And probably sneakily trying on all the gear while I wasn’t looking).

Did you honestly think you would ever come back again?

Well not after…well, how long has it been? 17 years. After 10 years I though if they’re not going to ring me up now, they’re not going to ring me up.

You look pretty much the same though…

…keep talking! (smiles).

Well your hair now is actually half the length of the original wig you had in the series…

…I don’t wanna talk about it! (smirks) Bad memories! (looks at recent photo of the 8th Doctor) Well, I suppose, yeh, I could just about get away with it.

Well thank you very much and I hope you had a great birthday, and here’s hoping this isn’t the last time we’ve seen you on screen as well, honestly, it was a real treat for everyone!

Well, with Doctor Who you just never know…you never ever know, do you…

Watch DWO's video interview with Paul McGann, below:

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(With thanks to the Showmasters team)

[Source: DWO]