David Tennant and Jennifer Garner; Anne Marie Fox/HBO(NEW YORK) — The new HBO comedy Camping premieres Sunday night. Co-created by Lena Dunham, the series stars Jennifer Garner as a tightly wound wife and mom who plans a camping trip for her husband’s birthday.
David Tennant plays Garner’s husband, and tells ABC Radio that as an adult, he’s only been tent camping once — at the Glastonbury Music Festival, where a downpour left the ground muddy.
“At first it was awful and then after sort of 24 hours you sink into it, he recalls. “You give into the feral nature of what you’re experiencing…Once you accept that you’re not going to wash [or] change your underpants for three days…there’s a sort of joy to it.”
Tennant’s lack of camping experience became pretty obvious while they were filming in the hills of Los Angeles — an area filled with rattlesnakes. He says, “I often got told off for walking through long grass which I would blithely do without thinking twice about it. And someone would go: Back on the path! Back on the path! And so, yes, I think it was a bigger threat than I faced up to.”
As Garner’s passive, husband, Tennant may be totally unrecognizable to fans who may have enjoyed him as the Jessica Jones supervillain Kilgrave, or his turn as Doctor Who, but the 47-year-old actor enjoyed the change.
“I do spend a lot of time playing characters who are a great deal more self-confident than I am,” he explains. “So, there’s something quite liberating in settling back into a kind of slightly dorky dad, which is probably closer to me than a Kilgrave,” he says.
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