Georgia Tennant, wife of Doctor Who star David Tennant, got candid about what the couple’s home life is really like with five kids, some of whom are neurodivergent. The actress, who met David on the set of the iconic sci-fi series in 2008, opened up on Russell Howard’s Five Brilliant Things podcast on Wednesday about how mealtimes were particularly difficult as her children all had different needs. She shares Olive, 14, Wilfred, 12, Doris, 10, and Birdie, five, with the Scottish actor, as well as her 23-year-old son, Ty, born from a previous relationship.
Controlled chaos
“I don’t understand how people sit around and all eat together,” Georgia began. “We’ve got a lot of neurodiverse kids, so a couple of them don’t like eating around other people. They go and eat in separate rooms. A couple of them won’t eat the same food, so we have to cook a different meal for them. Mealtime is like two-and-a-half hours of me wandering around the house serving different people in different rooms.”
She added that the family typically doesn’t spend mealtimes together, as it proves too chaotic and disruptive. “We never [eat together]. Christmas, I think we do,” the blonde beauty said. “Every now and again, we’ll go to a pub and we’ll all sit down and it’s just a [expletive] nightmare. I just want to go home. They’re crawling on the table, one’s got headphones on. It’s just like, no.”
Georgia shared that despite the chaos, she wouldn’t change their family dynamic for the world. “I like how different they are,” she said. “It seemed weird that two people can keep creating such a different smorgasbord of humans. And that’s really fascinating.”
Opposites attract
The mother of five explained that she had her own neurodivergent tendencies, like not allowing her food to touch on the plate. “A very good friend of mine is a potter and she made me a plate for my 40th, which was separated into little areas because she noticed that I didn’t like any of my food to touch,” she recounted. “I can have a meal and I can put – like a child – all of the separate things on the plate, and then I’m in control of what I put together.”
The 40-year-old added that it took her a long time to understand that eating her meal in separate bites served as a way to control the chaos in her life. As for David, the 54-year-old has opposite tastes to his wife and prefers a sandwich “with many, many things inside it,” which “brings him so much joy”.
© Dave Benett/BAFTAParenting 101
David and Georgia connected on the set of Doctor Who while filming the episode “The Doctor’s Daughter” – a happy coincidence, considering she is the real-life daughter of the fifth Doctor, Pete Davidson. The pair married in 2011, and David legally adopted her son Ty in the same year. The family of seven is tight-knit, with Georgia sharing that they all abide by one rule: be kind.
© Instagram“What I realised is kindness is the most important thing. And I have repeated that back to all of my children since they were able to speak,” she told Luxury London. “I think that being a foundation for anything else you do in your life is all that matters, because we really, really need [kindness]. Remembering that that’s the most important thing will change the way you interact with the rest of the world.”
Read the full article here
