John Barrowman Talks Music Music Music (page 2)

17 November 2008

You do come from a background of musical theatre and when you do those show you are supported by the rest of the cast so what was it like on tour standing up their all by yourself?

Awesome (laughs) I’m not going to lie to you. It’s great to be part of a company and I love being a company man in a show but to be centre stage all by myself, I still saw myself as being supported by my band, but it’s a very different feeling when you are out there by yourself and it’s all about you, in fact I was listening to a song the other day that I was thinking about putting in the new tour called Talk About Me (laughs).

What made you decide to move into music as most of us know you as an actor?

I didn’t really decide I was asked Sony, last year’s album was with Sony BMG I am now with Sony Epic, and Sony approached me to ask if I wanted a recording deal and who is going to say no to that? One of the biggest recording companies in the world asked me if I wanted a recording contract and all of the things that have happened to me over the last five or six years I haven’t planned they have just happened and as any human being who wants to work and loves to work if I think I’m going to have a good time I’ll do it.

You are obviously best known as Captain Jack Harkness what can we expect from the new series of Torchwood?

Here’s my official answer Torchwood will come back bigger and better and it will be a five part mini series over one week, so every night you will get a cliffhanger, hopefully airing in the spring and summer. There will be new faces, you will learn a lot more about Captain Jack’s past, his dark past, you will also learn a lot more about Gwen, there will also be some deaths but a lot of action and excitement.

And why has the series been cut down from its usual thirteen week run?

It’s been cut down specifically because we have been moved to BBC1 and we can’t take a full fledged series from BBC2 to BBC1 because a lot of BBC1 viewers have never seen it, which is yeas and no a lot have seen it and a lot haven’t. You have to make an impact on 1 because if we too the series over the rating that we got on 2 wouldn’t hold us steady to last on BBC1 so we have to make an impact and to make that impact we have to condense it down into five. But series four, if we come back, we will come back with more.

And how surprised were you that Torchwood has done so well as a stand alone series?

Overwhelmed I can’t believe it! We knew that we were doing a production that we had to, when we did it first on BBC3, we knew that we had to be loyal to the original brand of Doctor Who and when we got out ratings and we got the best ratings in the history, and we till hold that title on digital television, and they moved us to two and we got good ratings there, even in our repeats we beat some programmes on other channels, so the success I’m overwhelmed and I think that’s why I continue to do my variety of things because it’s my way of saying thank you to everybody. I figure that if I work harder and try to do other things that please people then they will see that I really appreciate what they have done for me.

when you singed on for the role back in 2004 did you imagine that Jack would become such a popular character?

Oh god no! If you had asked me back then I thought that Jack was only going to be in the show for five episodes and that was it and then lo and behold I get my own show it’s gone worldwide and Jack has become an iconic figure, not just in the UK but worldwide, and honest to God I’m speechless I’m absolutely, and excuse my French, f***ing thrilled (laughs) I’m speechless and when I’m in other countries, and I can’t do accents very well, people come up to me going (Chinese accent) ‘Captain Jack’ I’, like he’s everywhere.

The funny thing is my niece had a lecturer come to talk to them, she’s learning to be a public school teacher in the States, and they brought a guy in to talk to them about being gay and how to help your students deal with that and not to make an issue of it. So he asked if anyone had heard of a show called Torchwood (laughs) so my niece raised her hand and said ‘yeah’ and he was like ‘ You have? That’s such an obscure show I was going to get you guys to watch it’ and she was like ‘Well Captain Jack is my uncle’ and he just said ’Shut up! I’m gonna have to text my partner and tell him’ (laughs).

And he just looked at my niece and said ’ Your uncle is hot’ and all of her classmates, the ones who didn’t know about the show were like’ He’s hot? Get him up on line lets look him up on the computer’ and they were like ’Oh my God Claire your uncle is hot’. So it’s things like that that really make me chuffed when she rings me up and says ’Oh my God Uncle John it was supposed to be a lecture about understanding and it turned into a loves fest for you’ (laughs).

What do think of David Tennant’s decision to step down from the role as the Doctor?

Well I think he is making the right decision, and as much as I would like to see him stay, as an actor he needs to move on and as he said if he didn’t step down then he would be there forever he does love it. The only problem is finding someone to fill his shoes because he has done such a brilliant job.

Who’s it going to be and is there anyone that you would like to see take on the role?

I have no idea I’m not part of that process. You know what someone might have said that about Captain Jack in the beginning stages Billie, myself and Chris Eccleston were the first three cast and if the producers were going and asking everyone who they would have liked to see I would have liked to have thought that there was no one else, and there wasn’t they said that I was the only one who they thought could play this role. So from that aspect I wouldn’t like to say anyone because I wouldn’t want to kill anyone else’s chances,