Kylie Minogue’s appearance on Dr Who got mixed reviews
Source: Herald Sun Australia: June 26, 2008 12:00am
KYLIE Minogue’s role on Dr Who may have received mixed reviews, but the show’s fans aren’t the only ones envious of David Tennant for kissing her on the set of the series. Tennant’s former co-star, Billie Piper, herself a pop star/actor and the object of lust for sci-fi fans, admits she was jealous of the friendship Tennant formed with Minogue on the set in Wales.
Minogue plays Astrid Peth, a waitress on a space-travelling Titanic, and shares a kiss with Tennant’s character, Dr Who.
Soon after Minogue’s much-hyped episode was filmed — airing here on ABC-TV on June 29 — Piper lamented to the British press she was ‘‘gutted” to have left before Minogue filmed her guest role.
Piper, who played the Doctor’s companion Rose for two years, left in 2006 but has since made the occasional cameo appearance.
She is now steaming up the screen in The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, to be seen on Channel 9 late this year.
Piper says Tennant has teased her about missing out.
‘‘I speak to David and he’s like, ‘I’ve got Kylie’s number on my phone’. I want to be Kylie’s friend,” Piper says.
Minogue reportedly grew close to Tennant after she provided a shoulder to cry on when his mother died of cancer as they filmed the episode.
They forged such a strong bond they set tongues wagging that they may be more than just friends when they arrived together at London’s Old Vic theatre to see Cinderella.
But Tennant is now reportedly romancing another Dr Who co-star, Georgia Moffett, the 23-year-old who played his daughter and the real-life daughter of the fifth Dr Who, actor Peter Davison.
Minogue remains single after splitting with her long-term partner Oliver Martinez in February, although rumours abound that they are back together.
He was dubbed a love-rat by the press for supposedly cheating on Minogue with former Lost star Michelle Rodriguez.
Minogue, who rose to fame in the 1980s as the overalls-clad Charlene Mitchell on Neighbours, was lured back to the small screen by her stylist friend Will Baker, who is good friends with Dr Who scriptwriter Russell T. Davis.
Davis initially denied Minogue was going to be a guest star to try to generate more intrigue in the special episode.
He later said he was ‘‘delighted and excited” at securing Minogue’s Lservices for what promised to be ‘‘the most ambitious and best Christmas episode yet”.
‘‘She missed acting and fancied the discipline,” Davis says of Minogue. ‘‘She did this because I think that’s the way her thoughts are heading.”
Unlike Australian programming, where most prime-time series are rested over the low-rating holiday period, the Brits have a tradition of creating Christmas Day episodes of popular series such as EastEnders, Coronation Street and Dr Who.
They generally prove to be the highest-rating of the year.
Minogue has not acted since her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role as a green fairy in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge in 2005, and a one-off appearance in Kath & Kim as a grown-up Epponnee Rae.
But she has been eager to return to acting and saw the Dr Who 2007 Christmas special as the means to do it.
‘‘People see me as Kylie the singer,” Minogue says. ‘‘It would be a dream for me to be taken seriously as an actress.”
Unfortunately, most of her screen outings have been a dismal failure. One film critic described her as the ‘‘worst actress in the English-speaking world” after seeing her in Streetfighter.
Her work on Dr Who didn’t fare much better; she was widely panned for looking too old and lacking conviction.
But not everyone found the performance unconvincing.
Filming the episode last July in Cardiff, an elderly woman asked Minogue to fetch her a cup of tea, believing the star to be a real-life waitress.
The episode was a huge ratings success in the UK, attracting a whopping 13.3 million viewers — a series high. The previous Christmas episode, which starred comedian Catherine Tate, drew 9.4 million.
It also marked the pop princess’s return to public life after her battle with breast cancer.
Since filming Dr Who, she has been a bundle of energy, embarking on a European tour of her show KYLIEX2008.
She told Seven’s Sunrise early this year she would bring the show to Australia ‘‘as soon as I can”.
‘‘I want to have in my head more solidly what the tour will be and if I can manage what I’ve planned so far,” Minogue said.
‘‘I’m really looking forward to touring the new album to see what happens with the songs coming to life and interacting.
‘‘Of course I would love to come back here. We are plotting and planning right now.”
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