David Tennant offers to donate his own skull to be used as stage prop

He's worried bureaucracy would prevent it

The Scotsman reflected on playing the Danish Prince, who mourns the dead court jester after his skull is exhumed, with The Royal Shakespeare Company.

He told the Off Menu podcast: "I’d very happily appear again in a production of Hamlet playing a different part, yeah. There’s something glorious about that."

According to the 53-year-old, a real skull was used for the iconic scene. It was donated to The Royal Shakespeare Company by a pianist who passed away in 1982.

He said: "We had a real skull. We had the skull of a real human - a guy called Andre Tchaikovsky who was a classical musician who had left his skull to The Royal Shakespeare Company to appear in a production of Hamlet. 

"So I did not have to fake any weight there. I was holding Andre, he was Yorick. I was really really thrilled, not in a macabre way.

"That moment in the play is about connecting with mortality, so there’s no acting involved - you’re looking into the eyes of a human who once walked the Earth. There’s something very powerful about that."

Though Tennant expressed his wish for his own skull to be one day used, he joked that bureaucracy would likely prevent it.

The Doctor Who star said: "To be honest, I don’t think you can do it anymore, cos Andre had done it and left it and it had gone through all the various....there’s a lot of hoops to jump through, for various governmental organisations who perhaps frown on the idea of body parts being left to anything really other than cremation.

"So I think the laws have now changed, that Andre is probably the last person to have been able to have done that. But his skull is still there, he can be used in future productions of Hamlet."

The actor has recently been tipped to make a surprise return to Doctor Who amid the show's uncertain future.

He originally played the Time Lord in 2005 but returned for the 60th Anniversary Specials in 2023.

Speculation that current Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, could exit after just two seasons has been growing due to uncertainty around the future of the programme beyond 2025.