David Tennant Reflects on Phone-Hacking Scandal in New ITV Drama
David Tennant has returned to the small screen, but this time the role is personal. The acclaimed actor, known worldwide for Doctor Who, stars in The Hack, ITV’s dramatisation of the infamous News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
“I got a phone call from the police saying your name is in a notebook and I joined one of the bundles of people who took that to court,” Tennant recounts. “I mean, at the time I was in Doctor Who, so I was useful for a story, I suppose …
“It didn’t come as a massive surprise, but the whole thing had always felt like a gross invasion. It felt like the world had gone a bit mad, that we lost a moral compass, that a layer of humanity was being stripped away by what was happening here.”
Tennant was among more than 1,600 victims who settled out of court with the now-defunct News of the World. The scandal exposed deeply entrenched ties between parts of the media, government, and police.
Tennant remains circumspect about the details of his case. “I get very confused as to what I am legally allowed to talk about,” he admits.
The saga is decades-old yet still resonates. Stories in The Guardian slowly revealed a pattern of illegal news gathering, the flawed “rogue reporter” defence, and the public outcry over Milly Dowler’s hacked phone.
The trials of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson followed, and the newspaper closed in 2011 with an apology from Rupert Murdoch, calling it “the most humble day of my life.” Tennant received his settlement in 2018.
Yet, as Tennant and Emmy-winning writer Jack Thorne emphasise, the story is far from over. The pair spoke via video call, Tennant filming the second season of Rivals.
The drama follows Guardian reporter Nick Davies and Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook, whose investigation into private investigator Daniel Morgan was allegedly disrupted by figures linked to the News of the World. Tennant portrays Davies, while Robert Carlyle plays Cook.
Thorne, 46, admits he was initially sceptical. “It’s not about these powerful bodies, the press, the police, and politics, conspiring together. I think there was a complacency, more than that.
“There was a complacency in the journalism, and then there was a complacency in the way those other bodies looked at that journalism.
They said, ‘OK, this is how much we understand, and this is how much we choose to understand. And, because we’ve got our own things going on, we’re going to keep on that path.”
He says the scandal highlights the erosion of public trust in legacy media. The Leveson inquiry addressed press culture but never fully investigated links between journalists and police, a move halted by the Conservative government and still overlooked, Thorne argues.
“We only heard half of it,” he says. “And Leveson should have been given the ability to go back in and look at criminality in particular, which could have led to a whole number of different conclusions, which would have maybe changed the media landscape for the better.”
Tennant adds, “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t still happen. I think it was inconvenient … I certainly feel that the government, at the time, felt it was inconvenient, and that was a tragedy. I don’t know why the government is now continuing to ignore it.”
The series highlights victims’ bravery in confronting the tabloid empire. Tennant says taking on the role was an easy decision.
“Maybe I was foolhardy, and maybe I’ll come to regret that, but I think we’re being very fair,” he explains. “We’re being pretty objective, I think.
It’s been told from Nick’s point of view, and clearly Nick had a particular agenda, but neither do we paint Nick as someone who got it all right, necessarily.”
Tennant connects personally with Davies’s moral outrage. “I felt it was very easy to plug into that sense of moral bewilderment over what is happening, and that people are getting away with this,” he says.
“Indeed, you know, Nick’s tenacity is that he stuck with this story, while the rest of the world couldn’t seem to get annoyed. His sense of moral outrage was so great, and he knew that this was awful, and yet the rest of the world didn’t seem to catch up.
“It’s an oversimplification but also a truth to say that it took the gross violation of Milly Dowler’s phone to really make the world suddenly go, ‘Oh, hang on.
First look at episode 1 of The Hack.
Power. Lies. Corruption.
David Tennant & Robert Carlyle lead an all-star cast in this explosive true crime drama about the phone hacking scandal that rocked Britain.
Wednesday on ITV & ITVX
Co-produced by #ITVStudios and Stan, Australia pic.twitter.com/sbD9IHxn7n
— ITV Studios (@itvstudios) September 22, 2025
This is an awful thing to do to people. This is stealing people’s privacy. This is awful and wrong, and hang on a minute. We should have been shouting about this earlier.’”
Both Tennant and Thorne remain avid news consumers. Tennant starts his day with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, while Thorne subscribes to multiple newspapers, reflecting his concern about truth in contemporary Britain.
“My dad has bought a copy of the Guardian every day since 1962, so he’s a die-hard,” says Thorne. “I try to consume it from all sorts of different angles, because I think that’s part of my job … We’re in a world where so much harm is happening, and it’s our job to engage.”
Fans of Tennant’s recent work may also enjoy his latest role in Thursday Murder Club on Netflix, which showcases his versatility in a very different type of drama.
The Hack premieres Wednesday at 9pm on ITV1, with the complete box set available on ITVX.
