David Tennant Sparks Controversy for Telling Anti-Trans Politician to Shut Up

While accepting the “Celebrity Ally” award at the 2024 British LGBT Awards, Doctor Who star David Tennant shared his support for the queer community and called out a specific anti-trans politician. In response, British conservative media outlets and figures have misconstrued his meaning in a way to attack Tennant’s character.

While accepting his award, Tennant delivered a speech in which he said he was honored to receive it in the first place, but the idea that people need to be rewarded for thinking there should be equality among everyone depressed him. “It is human decency. We shouldn’t live in a world where that is worth remarking on,” Tennant says, considering it the least we can do to let people live how they want to live.

Tennant went on to call out Kemi Badenoch, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade and a Minister for Women and Equalities and prominent member of the U.K.’s conservative Tory party. Badenoch is an outspoken anti-trans politician, considering gender-affirming care as some new form of conversion therapy. “However, until we wake up, and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore–I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up,” Tennant says, before finishing his speech and accepting the award.

Badenoch is a very prominent black woman in Tory politics, so conservative allies began to attack Tennant’s speech for what they considered racist, misogynistic, and violent comments. U.K. Home Secretary James Cleverly thought that Tennant should apologize, going to Twitter to write, “I’m not sure David understands the irony of trying to silence the voice of the most senior black female politician in the UK’s history, in the name of ‘defending’ a minority community.” Badenoch herself tweeted, “A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end.”

Tennant’s comments on Badenoch might not have been the most eloquent, but by no means was he inferring some kind of violence should be done to Badenoch to make her disappear, and telling her to shut up wasn’t for her being a woman or being Black, but because of her harmful ideology that directly affects the trans youth of the United Kingdom. Noted transphobic author J. K. Rowling joined in on hating Tennant, tweeting an unattributed quote that is implied to be from Tennant where he describes anti-trans activists as “A tiny bunch of whinging f***ers who’re on the wrong side of history.” Rowling captioned this quote by writing, “This man is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care, the nurses currently suing their health trust for making them change in front of a man, girls and women losing sporting opportunities to males and female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders.”

The backlash to Tennant’s comments have spiraled to the point where British conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph accused him of telling feminists and women’s rights activists to shut up, but he never mentioned either of those groups in his speech. Tennant himself is not on social media to respond, but his wife Georgia reposted a video on instagram from the Trans Solidarity Alliance in which David Tennant says, “Trans youth are loved.” Despite the unintended controversy, it seems that Tennant is unbothered and has no intention to apologize to Badenoch anytime soon.

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