Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: chris chibnall, doctor who, interview, jackdaw, Jamie Childs

Doctor Who Director Childs Wanted Spielbergian Jodie Whittaker Start

Director Jamie Childs (Jackdaw) spoke with us about wanting to give Jodie Whittaker's first full Doctor Who episode a Steven Spielberg vibe.

Anytime any creative talent – director or writer – enters a pop culture establishment, especially on a franchise like Doctor Who, it could get quite intimidating. Director Jamie Childs was tasked with helping to usher in the Jodie Whittaker era, starting with the 2018 Series 11 premiere "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" under the guidance of showrunner Chris Chibnall. Childs, who would later work on HBO's His Dark Materials, Netflix's The Sandman, and Disney+'s Willow, proceeded to direct three more episodes during the series. While promoting his latest film Jackdaw, which made its premiere at Fantastic Fest, he spoke to Bleeding Cool about how his inspiration from Steven Spielberg helped get him the job and set the tone for the journey of the 13th Doctor.

Doctor Who: Jamie Childs on Tapping Inspiration from Steven Spielberg

"The showrunner and producer came to me because they wanted to do something slightly different with it from where it'd been before. I'm massively influenced by [Steven] Spielberg, and I'm not in the minority there," Childs said of how he was inspired by the Jaws director's earlier filmmaking journey through World War II. "I'm always trying to kind of add a little bit of Spielbergian style to British stuff. I made a short film which has never been released called 'Paul,' which is this fantasy realism shorts set in World War II in Normandy. I like it seen from a kid's point of view. It's got an 'E.T.' feel about it, and I wanted to do it like an 80s Spielberg film, which we don't get a lot of in British cinema."

And apparently, Childs' vision had some important fans. "They've seen that short, and they were like, 'This is how we feel like 'Doctor Who' should feel in this new series. Could you pull this off with 'Doctor Who?' I was like, 'Yeah. That's exactly what would be fun for the show,'" he said. "They wanted me to come to it with that kind of Amblin style. That was like my biggest freedom that they gave me, and they wanted to do that. We changed the way we shot it in the first anamorphic episode of 'Doctor Who' ever. They let me go free-range on Spielberg. I checked his back catalog, checked his blocking, and tried to apply that. That was a challenge, but also they gave me a lot of freedom to do that."

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