Gareth Roberts interview - Radio Times, April 2007

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Gareth Roberts interview - Radio Times, April 2007

Nick Griffiths talks to the man who penned The Shakespeare Code.

"[Gareth] Roberts didn't have [Dean Lennox] Kelly in mind when scripting the character [of Shakespeare]. "It's very unlikely casting but he's absolutely perfect, in a strange, strange way," he says. "Actually, I had Christopher Eccleston [Tennant's predecessor as the Doctor] in mind. Which would have been mad."

And handily, no-one knows much about Shakespeare's character - only his characters. "There are very few references, and trying to extrapolate from them could lead you down all sorts of weird alleys," says Roberts. "So what we thought was fun was to make him a kind of celebrity."

Roberts - who has written for Swinging, Emmerdale and Brookside, as well as a number of Doctor Who novels - not only had to write Shakespeare's dialogue but also lines for a "new" play, Love's Labour's Won (which some believe did once exist as a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost). "It was daunting," he concurs. "But you just have to get on with it. And we only see tiny bits of it in the episode, so I didn't worry too much about the blank verse and writing timeless iambic pentameter."

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