Award winning actress Billie Piper joined her Doctor Who costar David Tennant in a podcast on October 20.

She spoke of her initial experience playing Rose Tyler opposite Christopher Eccleston’s ninth Doctor while filming Doctor Who.

“I didn’t grow up with [Doctor Who] and then actually when we started making it, everyone said it was going to be a failure,” she laughed. “So you just didn’t imagine it being on for than three months — imagining that 15 years later, it’s still probably the biggest job you will have ever done and you’ll still be talking about it and going off and meeting people and celebrating it. That was a big reach.”

David Tennant spoke of his experience joining Piper filming her second series of Doctor Who after it became a big hit.

“We were surrounded by crowds there were people buzzing around wherever we went or bundled into cars an whisked into places through the back door and chased by photographers. It was the closest I ever felt, to imagining what it must be like to being a pop star.”

Piper, who had been a pop star as a teen, compared her early experiences of being a singer then going onto acting after taking a break.

“Sometimes I found it quite hard because I had like three years just living a life that wasn’t particularly normal but it wasn’t 17 hours a day selling records and just being very actively public and then I really enjoyed those sort of sloppy years and then going back to starting Doctor Who just reminded me about that and there was all this pressure and responsibility and the  responsibility was a big part of it because I was in my early twenties and quite wild and then your this sort of face of a family show and I found that really hard.”

“You become this thing to people and you don’t really have any part in that and then so you have to behave a certain way or at least try to and, you know, that’s quite annoying. It’s not the worst thing in the world but it means you can’t be yourself entirely and it means that you become incredibly guarded and, for me, reclusive — always.”

As the pair spoke warmly with each other, Tennant spoke further on the pressures of heading a famous television franchise.

“I’ve often said, in the intervening 15 years, that entering into that madness and that kind of cavalcade that that show was and particularly that loss of anonymity which I’d not really experienced before was something. And I don’t know that I really understood this at the time but because I had you to go on that journey with, I think I survived it much better than I might have done.”

“You’re practised at it. You sort of knew what it was to lose that layer of skin. It was very helpful to be on that journey with someone who understood what it was.”

“I think I really missed you when you’d gone because I’d really cherished that partnership, sort of on-screen and off because I think we were both going through quite different but significant kind of life transitions at the time.”

Billie Piper talked further with David Tennant about her life as a teenage pop star and pursuing an acting career. She spoke of taking full control of her personal story, such as her involvement I Hate Suzie, a drama which she produced, co-wrote and starred.

You can listen to Billie Piper and David Tennant’s conversation on the latest episode of David Tennant Does A Podcast With…