I Am What I Am

by John Barrowman

  Catherine knew how iconic her comedy characters had become and she was fine with an occasional burst of dialogue or antics from her show seeping onto the set. She and I had a good laugh when we were working together.13 She was naturally funny, plus she loved to sing. In fact, one day, after a particularly rousing rendition of ‘9 to 5’ from Catherine,14 I rang Trevor Jackson at Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s office. I let him know that if there was ever another anniversary performance of Les Mis, Catherine would like to play Madame Thénardier. In fact, Catherine’s a closet musical-theatre fan. Loves a bit of the sparkle, does our Catherine.15

  Of course, changes are afoot on Doctor Who. I’ve no doubt when we look back on the new Doctor’s first exploits, we’ll all remember that we may have vented a bit about Matt Smith and how he’s just not like David, but sometime after those initial little rants, we’ll have adjusted and grown to love him, and we’ll be travelling with our new Doctor wherever he may take us. It’s the nature of the character that change is inevitable.

  In my mind, Christopher Eccleston may have been the Doctor who launched Captain Jack, but David Tennant was my Doctor, the one I sailed with. Give me a moment or two, please.

  The first time I met the new Doctor, Matt Smith, he’d come to the BBC Television Centre in London to meet with the public-relations department. I was in the same office, reviewing my interview schedule for Tonight’s the Night. I introduced myself and we chatted for about ten minutes. He said he’d love for his Doctor’s and Jack’s paths to cross in their futures. We laughed about a couple of our favourite Doctor Who moments, I wished him great success, and he left. As soon as he disappeared16 down the hall, I turned to the others in the office and said, ‘I feel as if I just cheated on David.’

  The year between early 2007 and mid 2008 became ‘the year of awful endings’ for me. Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner announced they were stepping away from the helm of Doctor Who; David Tennant revealed he was moving on to other galaxies; and, as I’ve mentioned, three of my beloved dogs passed away.

  David’s moving on made me melancholy for a while. I have to admit his leaving felt a bit like the other brother in the family leaving home. But then I realized that I love the show, I love David, and in the end every Doctor leaves us. David had lots of other things he wanted to do in the entertainment business, and I could understand and completely respect that.

  When David came to see my ‘An Evening with John Barrowman’ concert in Cardiff, I made sure he was in a private box17 because otherwise he’d have been mobbed. Playing the Doctor has changed his life, as much as playing Jack has changed mine, and David’s genuineness and his compassion have never faltered.

  For example, when it was announced this past year that mobile-phone numbers were going to be published, David texted all his friends who were actors, telling us which website to visit to have our numbers removed. I thought it was so sweet that he’d think about all of us in that way. That’s the kind of dish we share on Doctor Who.

  I was not surprised at Russell’s announcement to turn the Doctor’s universe over to Steven Moffat, a great writer who helped me to find Jack’s voice. Russell and I are alike in many ways and one of our similarities is that we not only embrace fresh challenges, but we actively seek them out. For Russell, like David, it was time to move on to something new. I must admit, however, that the part of his news that did come as a shock was learning that his new challenge might take him to work in the US.

  I’d love to be sitting at an outdoor table at The Ivy in LA when Russell takes a meeting with a group of American producers and cuts right through their Hollywood bullshit. Russell doesn’t conform to anyone’s expectations but his own, and, like his writing, he sees a metaphor in most things, and most people’s metaphors don’t fit his expansive and creative way of thinking.

  Russell’s co-executive producer on Doctor Who and Torchwood, Julie Gardner, moved to the US to run BBC Worldwide, so I imagine Russell will be collaborating again with Julie.18 If you want drama that pushes boundaries and is brilliantly written, you want Russell T. Davies on your script.

  I’m never surprised when people move on. When I think back to some of my closing nights in the West End, I can still see two or three people who would sit, sobbing, on the couches in the corner, or stand gutting themselves at the bar, crying floods because the show had ended and things would never be the same again. I’ve never been like that. I get emotional, but I’ll do it over a celebratory glass of champagne – not into a hanky. I’m always moving, and I’m always moving on to the next thing.

  One of the newer areas I’ve moved into recently was to record a series of BBC Radio 4 Torchwood specials. The request came from BBC Radio through Gavin. Funnily enough, it arrived not long after I’d had an experience that related to the plot of the radio script.

  I’d been invited to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, by Royal Society Research Fellow, brilliant physicist, ex-D:Ream keyboard player, and really cool guy, Brian Cox, to visit the Large Hadron Collider19 – where they hope to recreate and then study the conditions of the universe’s creation. Scott and his parents, Sheelagh and Stirling, travelled with me, and each of us was able to step inside the collider tunnel itself, which is about seventeen miles long and runs deep underground along the French and Swiss borders.

  On behalf of Captain Jack and myself, I planted my feet directly on the spot where the opposing particle beams will collide, recreating the Big Bang and obliterating that fixed point in space and time forever. I felt an incredible rush standing on that spot. In years past, what these scientists are now planning would have been the stuff of science fiction – only seen, perhaps, by Captain Jack in one of his futures – but yet here I was, standing on the site where a mind-blowing reality would take place.

  Scott and his folks loved visiting the Hadron Collider at least as much as I did. In fact, for the Gills, I think it’s safe to say that this visit to CERN to see the consequences of decades of scientific research, creativity and hard work ranked in their top-five all-time best experiences.

  When I read the script for Torchwood ‘ Lost Souls’, the first BBC Radio 4 special, I loved it and immediately agreed to sign up. Because of my visit to CERN, I was able to describe vividly to Gareth, Eve and Freema what I’d seen in the collider, helping them to visualize what we were performing.

  The day I was in the studio for ‘ Lost Souls’, relating my trip, I had one of those moments when you know it’s you speaking, but it’s as if you’re listening rather than talking. I sounded as if I really knew what I was talking about! I could hear myself describe and explain in ‘showbiz words’20 what it was hoped the collider would achieve and what scientists might learn from it; sadly, three days later I couldn’t tell you what I’d had for lunch that day. My brain works that way sometimes when it gets overloaded.21

  Radio shows are very passive to perform. I had to stand in a room with a microphone, a music stand and my script. The space is dead space; its only ambience the layer of soundproof tiles.22 I was in the studio most of the time with Eve and Gareth, and, even with the three of us and our history together, we had a hard time getting anything beyond a little mild banter going among us between our takes.

  It turned out that Torchwood ‘ Lost Souls’ was the most downloaded radio programme on the BBC iPlayer and the most listened-to radio show in the history of BBC Radio 4 – which is why they came back to us and asked if we’d do three more. Of course! It’s at times like this that I realize Torchwood has become this amazing, worldwide phenomenon. Because it’s such an international hit, I don’t think Russell and Julie will ever disconnect completely from their Torchwood family.

  Russell and Julie are now based in Los Angeles, and so their move does, of course, raise the question of who will head up Torchwood on the production side. However, given that the show is as big a success in America as it is in the UK, I think that Russell and Julie will continue to be a part of Torchwood’s future on both sides of the Atlantic.

&nb
sp; The more I get to know Jack’s character, and the deeper Russell and his fellow writers for series three (John Fay and James Moran) delved into Jack’s psyche and his personal history, the more Jack’s relationship to humanity keeps evolving. For me, this depth makes Jack more and more interesting to play, and I think it’s one of the reasons why Jack has become so iconic in popular culture. He’s not afraid to challenge authority in all of its guises – alien and human – and he’s demonstrated over and over again with Torchwood, and as a companion to the Doctor, that he will endure anything to protect and serve humanity. Like Prometheus, Jack is with the human race but not of the human race.

  Do I think about this stuff when I’m playing Jack? Sometimes. Other times, I see these things in Jack’s character when I’m watching the completed shows (which I do, the same as all of you), or when I’m reading emails from fans who have been affected in some way by a gesture, a comment, or a story arc involving Jack. For me, Jack has done much more than touch my life; he’s changed it completely.

  Playing Captain Jack has given me a freedom of choice and a level of clout and credibility in the entertainment business. Let me say it: playing Captain Jack has made me a celebrity. I’m noticed whether I’m running in for dog food to Costco in Cardiff or getting off the plane in South Africa, and I’m embracing and loving every minute of this fame. I have to say here that I have a difficult time listening to famous people,23 many whose work I admire, whining about being a celebrity, or refusing to acknowledge that they are one, or even suggesting that being a celebrity is some kind of burden they have to bear so that they can continue to perform.

  I once heard a famous actor24 say that being a celebrity is the worst thing that can happen to an actor. First of all, I’m not sure what that means exactly. Was he suggesting that his ability to perform, to be the best he could be in a role, was hampered somehow by his celebrity status? Or was he suggesting that celebrities can’t be serious actors? Either way, his statement says more to me about the actor himself than about the challenges of being a celebrity.

  Years ago, when I first broke into television, there was a teeny, tiny part of me that said to the other voices in my head that, if I really made it, I might have to deal with the trappings of being famous. It’s the nature of popular culture that celebrity status can come with entertainment success. For me, it’s one of the possible by-products of being an entertainer, and, because of that, my attitude has been to embrace it, when necessary manage and control it, but above all else not to let it change who I am at my core.

  Granted, there are certain things I can’t do anymore. Riding public transportation can be difficult, so I have cars.25 But as far as I’m concerned, being a celebrity has not only provided me with financial and creative freedom, but it’s also given me the ability to open up opportunities for my family, friends, strangers and important causes, which might not have been possible before.

  All thanks to my hero, Captain Jack Harkness.

  TABLE TALK #9

  ‘Zaza, Elphaba, Tottie and Me’

  Most of my knowledge about multiple-personality disorder comes from movies like Sybil, Primal Fear and The Incredible Hulk (which is technically about a double-personality disorder, but you get my point). My pop-culture understanding of what I’m sure in reality is a terrible thing1 is that the personalities are entirely separate from one another, and usually one is more dominant than the other.

  Given that, I’ve decided my manager, my friend, my co-executive producer of Tonight’s the Night, and the man who helped map my career with me, Gav Barker, has an alternate-personality disorder. Alternate not multiple because multiple suggests the whole ‘look away from the camera, look back, and suddenly – yikes! – it’s a different person’ disorder. Not the case with Gav. His main personality shares space with all his alternate ones.

  His first alternate is Olivia Obvious. She makes me laugh so she’s one of my favourites. If I’m out somewhere with Gav – at a restaurant, say, or just walking along the streets of London or LA – and I say to him, ‘Check out that hot guy over there,’ Gav cannot check out that hot guy over there the way most of us could, should and would.2 Gav can’t give the time-honoured surreptitious glance, or the coy look over the shoulder, or even the peek from behind a magazine. Not if his life depended on it.

  Instead, Gav Barker becomes Olivia Obvious. He might as well get up, walk across the room and eyeball the hottie at a three-inch distance from head to toe, including all the fun parts in between, for all the subtlety he has in these situations. Olivia’s tongue might as well hang out as she pants. When Olivia raises her head, I put mine in my hands.

  Then there’s the personality that appears most often with me on the phone or via email. Gav will say: ‘You have got to give me an answer to this email right now!’ or ‘This question needs answering immediately because we need to move on this,’ or ‘You must correct this in that statement you made!’ Let me introduce you to Patricia Pedantic. Patricia raises her head an awful lot when I have two or three significant projects running at the same time.

  Patricia’s close friend and confidante is Betty Bitchy, who tends to show her side most when Gav’s driving. When someone cuts him up in traffic, Betty Bitchy appears. When someone is moving too slow, Betty takes over. Betty is a machine gun: her words fast and furious, her tongue a lethal weapon.

  Alison Angry doesn’t make an appearance very often, which is a good thing, but I can tell when Gav’s about to lose it, and, in my own helpful way, I’ll say, ‘I see Alison’s coming out?’ Calms her down right away. Sometimes, when Gav gets too dogmatic about something and I see Alison in the wings, I’ll say, ‘Why don’t you invite Patricia Pedantic to come out instead?’

  This tendency of mine to give nicknames is one that was nurtured when I was growing up in the States, where everyone had one. There was BJ from BJ and the Bear, the Fonz in Happy Days, Bo in The Dukes of Hazzard, Mork3 in Mork and Mindy, Gopher on The Love Boat, Ponch in CHiPs and, by far the father of them all, J. R. in Dallas.

  In my family, none of us had a nickname. We weren’t allowed. In fact, my parents were not afraid to chastise anyone who shortened any one of our names: ‘That’s not what we christened him,’ they’d say, and then they’d demand a retraction. This whole purity-of-name notion changed when we stepped off the plane in Chicago. Suddenly, my brother Andrew was Andy to most of his friends and ‘Wee John’ stuck to me.

  For different reasons, my gran, Murn, who’d had at least one stroke by the time she first met Kevin, my brother-in-law, in 1980, always called him Gavin.4 She couldn’t get her tongue to say what I’m sure she knew in her head was Kevin. It always came out as ‘Gavin’.

  I thought this was hysterical. Remember, I was thirteen. I had a time-honoured duty to fulfil as a younger brother, plus a fascination with nicknames. I called him Gavin too. This, of course, has stuck, and every now and then, in memory of Murn,5 I’ll address Kevin as Gavin. I’m the only one who does, and he always answers.

  I give nicknames to everyone I work with and those names often stick well beyond the duration of our working relationship. I labelled one of my J8 dancers from Tonight’s the Night ‘Jennie Fabulous’, and that’s what everyone called her on set. When she joined me on tour, I overheard someone introduce her to the tour crew as ‘Jennie Fabulous’.

  On Torchwood, we all had nicknames for each other; I was ‘Jinny Baza’.6 This past summer, I covered for Zoë Ball on her Saturday-morning show on BBC Radio 2 when she was on vacation, and I introduced myself as ‘the Baza’ a couple of times. ‘Jinny’ received a lot of listener texts too.

  I have nicknames for my mum and dad now as well. My mum is known fondly around the house as ‘Miriam’. This nickname came about after the first few months of our living in the States. My parents often had a hard time getting people to listen to exactly what they were saying, for their new neighbours were often distracted by their, at that time, very thick Scottish accents. For some reason, whenever my mum wo
uld introduce herself as ‘Marion Barrowman’, the person she was meeting always thought she was saying ‘Miriam Barrowman’. The name stuck. She’s ‘Miriam’, and my dad is ‘Faither’ (to be said with aforementioned Glasgow accent) or ‘Big John’, which my mum calls him frequently if both he and I are in the vicinity. This way, she can distinguish who she’s calling for and avoid saying, ‘Wee John’, which I hate.7

  One of my favourite nicknames of all time is Carole’s, mainly because it came to her inadvertently through my misbehaviour. The name has stuck to her not only with me, but also with every member of the extended Barrowman and Casey clans. I suppose it’s not really a nickname since, by definition, it’s longer than her given name, but – oh, who cares, here’s the story.

  The night before Carole’s wedding in the August of 1982, her soon-to-be in-laws, Bud8 and Lois Casey, held the groom’s dinner9 at Joliet Country Club, one of my infamous teenage haunts. I was a groomsman at the wedding, and I was also set to play my flute while guests were seated in the church. I had responsibilities.

  Kevin, the groom, is from a large family, including two brothers (Kerry and Kelley) and three sisters (Kim, Kristi and Kolleen) and a busload, literally, of cousins, who all travelled down to the wedding from Minnesota. Many of them were invited to the groom’s dinner. Needless to say, it was a terrific party, especially because Kelley, Kevin’s youngest brother, and I turned out to be the same age – read underage back then – and the bar was an open one. Plus, I had the advantage of knowing the guys serving the drinks (from my occasional vodka-tonic charges on my dad’s country-club tab,10 when I hung out at the swimming pool on summer vacation), so the booze was flowing freely.

  At some point, after dinner but before speeches started, Carole noticed that her youngest brother was nowhere in the dining room. When she found Kelley and me in the bar, let’s just say, a little lubricated, she lost it. ‘You have responsibilities,’ she hissed at me, oh so delicately.