dean

@qurtedo thanks pal

David: I did a play a couple of years ago called Good, and there were only three of us in it. Three of us who played a selection of characters, and we were on this tiny little stage. We had to come through a bit in the back wall that they then closed behind us, and every night we heard it locking. We knew we just had each other for however long it was. That's the most terrified I've ever been in any play, and it never got easier. We did 12 weeks, and the three of us were absolute wrung-out dishrags by the end of that.

Fearne Cotton: Does it border on anxiety?

David: Oh my, it borders, it's right there. And a lot of it is to do with managing that anxiety.

Fearne Cotton: And how do you manage that anxiety?

David: Well… I don't really have a single answer to that, and sometimes I feel like I don't. I look back on that play, Good, very proudly, but the act of going through it was pretty miserable, actually, at times. Every night I thought, "I'm going to be in a state of such anxiety."

David: You can't take your brain apart and have it look at it like an engine, and trust that it's all working. You just have to rely on the fact that, well, it's worked before; I hope it will still work now. One day it might not. I think that's the thing. And that you'll self-sabotage so much that you'll somehow... the idea that you might fuck up, and that that will feel sort of game-changing, and that once you've gone there, you can never quite come back to a place of any kind of safety.

David: I got quite close to thinking, "Oh, this isn't fun anymore. The demons are so loud in my head that I don't want to do theatre again if this is what it's going to feel like." Maybe I've been lucky that it's never toppled over to the point where it absolutely paralyzed me. It has felt like it's come close now and again. Even though I'm feeling all that panic, and the rising horror, I can go: "This isn't new. I have been here before, and I was alright."

About six months into the run, he developed severe back problems which required surgery. Despite this, he returned to the stage a remarkable 2-3 weeks ahead of his scheduled recovery time.

I do quite a lot of theatre as well. And that's where the nerves, you really do have to battle with those demons there because it's so… you know, you're stepping out; it's like jumping out of a plane. You're stepping out in front of the audience and you have to deliver, and you have to not forget what you're doing, and your increasingly adult brain has to keep moving in the right direction.

But Hamlet made me the most nervous. I mean, that was the opening, the first public performance of Hamlet. I think it was the most scared I've ever been. It coincided with me just having done Doctor Who, so I'd sort of… I kind of lost my anonymity. I felt like the world was watching.

I was doing it at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It all felt like a big, scary, pointy thing. And I, particularly that very first performance, was overwhelmed. There was a moment when I thought, ‘Oh no, I can't do this. I am going to have to report out front that this show's off,’ because it was absolutely overwhelming. I was on the floor of my dressing room in the fetal position. I was genuinely... no, I'm serious. I thought, ‘I don't know how to tell people that everyone's going to have to go home, but I'm going to have to.’

Then there was one woman. Her name was Lynn Darnley, and she was the voice and verse expert at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She came round the dressing rooms just to go, “A good show! Jolly jolly!” And she found me in a heap. She came in and just sort of talked me round, made me breathe, made me think, just have a little bit of objectivity, just take a moment. She was kind and patient and literally got me on stage that night. I mean, I don't know - would I have got out of the fetal position? It didn't feel like I could. But she came at exactly the right moment, and she saved me.