Entertainment Weekly recently sat down with Steven Moffat where he chats about finding the 12th Doctor.
So how goes the search for the next Doctor?
“Well, it’s always just terrifying,” says Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat, who recruited Smith to replace his predecessor, David Tennant, back in late 2008. “If you’re a Doctor Who fan, as I have been all my life, you’ve been doing fantasy casting for this part for as long as you can remember. But when you’re suddenly faced with the reality that you are going to sit there and you are going to make that decision it does feel absolutely chilling. There’s a very big range of people who could play it and different ways you could go with it. We must get this right. One false move and the show’s over.”
And for those of us who are waiting not-so-patiently to find out who the new Doctor will be, Moffat assures us that we won’t have to wait too long after casting has been finalized:
When do you hope to announce the identity of the new Doctor?
“Unless we have an insane plan, we’ll announce a new Doctor within days of finalizing the new Doctor. Because it’s very very hard to keep any kind of a secret. The last time, when we chose Matt, we had to hold over on that one, because there was a Christmas Doctor Whospecial called “The Next Doctor” for which Russell (T. Davies, formerDoctor Who showrunner) was playing the game of pretending it was going to be David Morrissey. So we couldn’t deflate that. [Laughs]. But I think we’ll go public pretty fast.”
To find out more about Matt’s decision to leave, the 50th Anniversary Special and much more check out the entire interview here.