The Sun absolutely fits the bill of tabloid stereotype, and has proven so many times before today.

But, honestly, does it have to make everyone’s favourite Time Lord out to be as insecure as a tipsy highwire artist?  Hearing Matt Smith speak at the London sneak peek of The Pandorica Opens, the “news organisation” “quoted” him saying that he was, at first, uncomfortable in his role as the Doctor:

[Smith] says he freaked out when he realised how complicated the scripts would be.

And he spent much of the first month terrified and phoning his dad for reassurance.

Matt said: “In my first week I rang my dad and went, ‘I’m in trouble. There’s a lot of stuff to learn. The type of language it is and everything else.’ I talked to my dad a lot through my first month.”

Considering that tabloids often have a habit of modifying all but one word in any given person’s speech, take this story with a grain of salt.  Whether Smith said these exact words or not, the Sun likely took them out of context.  What Matt was actually trying to say was probably something along the lines of, “I always knew it was a big responsibility, but I didn’t get the full picture until I started the job.”  If you’re a tabloid “journalist,” please do not report the previous sentence as coming from Smith, because it didn’t.

Besides, we’ve all seen The Time of Angels, Smith’s first episode that was filmed, by now, and we can all agree that, whether we like his take on the Doctor or not, he definitely did not seem nervous or panicky about his performance in that story.  Perhaps he was a little on edge, as anyone would be on their first day playing Britain’s most famous television character, but it definitely did not bleed through to his acting.

Speaking of Matt’s acting, you can admire it even more tomorrow at 6:40PM on BBC1 and BBC HD when The Pandorica Opens airs!