NEW INTERVIEW: David Tennant Talks Broadchurch The Final Episode And The Future For Hardy



The critically acclaimed award-winning drama Broadchurch concluded its third and final series on BBC America last night.

The series saw David Tennant and Olivia Colman star as detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller, who were reunited in the hunt for the perpetrator of a serious sexual assault.

The final episode saw Hardy and Ellie uncover the truth behind the rape and lives in Broadchurch are changed forever...

David spoke to Yahoo! about the end of an era...
“I think the journey that Miller and Hardy go on is so beautifully summed up in that final scene,” David says. “They’re both broken people, really. They’re people who don’t have anyone other than each other. They’re sort of the closest thing to best friends that the other one has. They’re both kind of disconnected from their families, and they’ve been through some terrible, bruising experiences. They feel like slightly incomplete human beings. They found each other in this world, and yet even then they can’t quite connect.”

And what were his thoughts on the fact that some viewers were disappointed that Hardy and Miller never hooked up romantically?

 “I don’t think anyone on the show has ever conceived that Hardy and Miller would get together. It’s just not who they are. It’s not what they do,” he says. “They’re sort of diametrically opposed human beings, and yet, at the same time, they become mutually dependent on each other. I think that’s why that relationship works. I think if you started having some sort of Moonlighting-style will-we/won’t-we, you break the series immediately. It’s funny — it is brought up in interviews now and again. You sort of go, ‘What? Eh? How? Have you seen the show?‘”

And David doesn't believe that Hardy ever had a second date with the girl he met online...

“We received the scripts just before we shot them, so we filmed that date scene and I had no idea if it would be followed up. I did wonder, ‘Is this Chris setting Hardy up for a happy ending?'” he says. “But it never transpires, and I think it would be wrong, actually, if we saw Hardy walking off into the sunset hand-in-hand with anyone. I think there’s an inevitable misfire when Hardy tries to get his personal life on track.”

So what does David see happening to Hardy in the future?  He's played the role since 2013 and knows the man inside out...

 “In the short term, he’ll just come to work the next day, and he’ll probably go back to dealing with small-town crimes that will infuriate him and make him annoyed that he’s not in some bustling metropolis. Although on one level, of course, he’ll be delighted and relieved because it means that there aren’t any more terrible events going on in this town that’s had its fair share,” he says. “I think he’ll settle back into a life of complaining about his life, probably. And rolling his eyes at the small-town mundanities of it all. But as we find out in this series, he’s clearly decided that this is where he’s meant to be and that that’s where he’s going to stay. Unless something changes. I guess much will depend on Daisy and where she goes and what her life becomes, because I think that’s his final salvation, really — his daughter. And probably his Achilles’ heel as well.”

Broadchurch Season 3 is released on DVD in the USA on 12 September. 

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