Anything Goes

by John Barrowman

  As it turned out, working on Company was a remarkable achievement in my career not just because of the wonderful cast, nor even because it was another opportunity to work with Stephen, but because playing Bobby was a role that adjusted my outlook on life. After seventeen performances, I realized that I was a lot like Bobby. Despite my self-confidence, my professional successes, my outspokenness and my sense of humour, at that time I still relied too much on people and on the opinions of others. Sometimes, this stopped me from taking more public risks in particular areas of my life. Playing the character of Bobby made me realize my responsibility to those beyond my immediate orbit.

  Bobby is morally frozen, and this coolness affects his personal happiness. At that time in my life, I was politically frozen. I realized that my reticence to speak out about issues that concerned me might be affecting someone else’s personal happiness. I had to be more confident and clear in who I was as a gay man, and I needed to become more of an activist in areas where I could make a difference.

  Sir Ian McKellen also played a role in helping me foster this side of myself. Ian has been unflinchingly loud and proud about this aspect of his own life, and he has had a brilliant career in theatre and film. Ian’s smart and sure of himself, and over the years I’ve watched and admired how his support and activism for gay rights has made a difference.

  Ian and I have been friends for a number of years, and he would often come up to my dressing room for a visit if he was in the West End and I was in a show. In fact, one of my favourite visits of his took place one night during the Christmas holidays of 2004, when I was performing in Anything Goes. Ian was the invited guest judge for the company’s Dressing Room Holiday Decorating Contest. A Christmas tradition in many theatres, everyone decorates their dressing room and puts on a tableaux. John Fahey and I dressed up from a scene in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? I was Joan Crawford in a wheelchair strung with holiday lights and other festive frivolities; John was a pretty scary Bette Davis. Ian wandered round all the dressing rooms, taking notes, and probably a few bribes – kidding – until he came to the Bullpen, the dressing room belonging to many of the show’s sailors. Those boys had designed an old-fashioned peep show, where Santa was doing all sorts of very naughty things to a reindeer. They charged a pound to get in, and from Ian and my parents that night they made a bunch of money for the charity West End Cares.

  Later that evening, I’m proud to say we also helped Ian make history. Despite all the shows and plays he’d performed in over the years, he had never been in a West End musical. During the ‘Blow Gabriel Blow’ number, we got him into a costume and snuck him on stage for his West End musical debut.

  In 2006, Ian, who is one of Stonewall’s founders, accepted their Entertainer of the Year Award on my behalf, which I won for being a positive cultural role model, an honour I was incredibly proud to receive. I was delighted to be acknowledged by my community, and I believe I can trace that achievement back to the epiphany I experienced while playing Bobby.

  I remember a conversation I had with Ian once, in which he suggested that he and I should plan a dinner party and invite all the actors who are gay and afraid to come out. We’d make them stay at the table until they realized that they can be successful and gay at the same time.

  Who would be at this dinner party? Sadly, too many.

  When I was eighteen, I found myself in a compromising position on a bed in a New York loft with a man whom I would consider to be one of the finest actors of my generation. Nothing ended up happening, but over the years our paths have crossed at a distance, and I think this man would be a prime candidate for an invite to Ian’s imagined dinner party.

  One of the many lessons I’ve carried with me over the years from S. E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders is that our identities are complex and changing. With the help of a number of real friends, and a couple of fictional ones such as Bobby and Ponyboy, I’ve come to terms with all aspects of mine.

  ‘Together Wherever We Go’

  Guns drawn, torches on, Eve, Burn, Naoko and I stand in Torchwood team formation outside an empty industrial building in early July 2007. No. Stop. That’s not quite right. Let me start again. Guns drawn, torches on, Gwen, Owen, Toshiko and Captain Jack stand alert and poised to enter a suspicious warehouse, where, a few moments earlier, Rhys, Gwen’s boyfriend, disappeared and Ianto followed him into the darkness.

  ‘Quiet on the set.’

  ‘Sound rolling.’

  ‘And, action!’

  One by one, the team enters the warehouse. Jack in first, followed by Gwen, then Owen, and Naoko brings up the rear. When they’ve all entered safely and stealthily, they fan out across the mouth of the building. Suddenly, one at a time, they stop moving as they look up into the vast expanse of the site. They’re stunned by the implications of what they’ve discovered. A noise from the far corner of the industrial space distracts the team and, ignoring the horror of their discovery, they move cautiously towards the distant sounds.

  All of a sudden, they hear wild fluttering above them. The team freezes again. A bloody big pigeon swoops down from the rafters, flies across their heads, and splatters thick white shite on Captain Jack’s iconic blue coat.

  ‘Cut!’

  After we’d all stopped laughing, and I’d been cleaned up, we finished the scene, which was part of a sequence for a series-two episode. As far as I was concerned, the dramatically timed dropping meant the day’s shoot would be a breeze – because it’s good luck to have a bird shit on you. The problem was more with the mess it had made on my coat.

  Wardrobe actually has a number of coats that Captain Kack, I mean Jack, uses, which vary according to the demands of the scene. If Jack needs to be digging around in one of the tunnels under the Hub, or climbing in and out of a crater, or shooting the hell out of cannibals in their cosy kitchen, Jack has a coat that’s dirty and distressed to fit the occasion. If Jack’s walking, or striding, across the Millennium Square, he wears what wardrobe refers to as the ‘Hero Coat’, which is immaculately tailored and longer than the others. Finally, if Jack needs to run across a desolate future landscape chasing his past, his coat is shorter, so that Jack’s legs are less encumbered when he runs.

  The Doctor, played by David Tennant, has a similar problem with his wardrobe. Like Jack’s, the Doctor’s coat is pretty long and can easily wrap around his legs and pull him down faster than a Slitheen’s slippery tentacles. Next time you’re watching Doctor Who or Torchwood, notice how the Doctor and I throw our coats behind us before we begin to run. The move has become second nature to our characters now. When we were filming the episode ‘Utopia’, however, which was written by Russell T. Davies and directed by Graeme Harper, and which formed the first of a three-part episode narrative that concluded the third series of Doctor Who, running with our coats was the least of the shoot’s challenges.

  The opening sequence of this episode, after the TARDIS has landed and Jack’s been chucked unceremoniously to the ground, was filmed at an abandoned quarry in Cardiff, at night in the pissing rain. An interesting fact about filming in the rain is that unless it’s pouring down in buckets, rain generally can’t be seen on film. Therefore, as long as wardrobe can keep the actors dry, filming continues. But it’s still bloody raining for us!

  When Martha, followed by the Doctor, bursts from the TARDIS in this first scene, Jack lies dead on the ground. In reality, that meant I’d been lying on the cold damp ground for more than thirty minutes before Freema made her dramatic entrance because the crew had to set up the establishing shot. It was small consolation that there was a tarp spread across the gravel beneath me; the tarp was covered with more gravel so it wasn’t seen on the shot. Whenever possible, someone from wardrobe would stand over me with a huge golf umbrella, which led to a wonderful moment on set when I burst into song – ‘Singing in the Rain’, of course, while lying prone on the cold wet ground.

  On freezing night shoots like ‘Utopia’, wardrobe is more than up to the challenge
of protecting ‘the talent’, as us actors are known on set. The three of us, Freema, David and I, were all wearing wetsuits under our clothes for extra warmth that night. Each of us on Doctor Who and on Torchwood has our own set of green wellies and our own heavy, ankle-length warming coat, which is immediately wrapped around us as soon as we step off camera.

  And so, with his spectacular return in ‘Utopia’, Jack is finally back with the Doctor, after a wait of an entire season. One of the reasons that Jack’s return on Doctor Who took so long was that Christopher Eccleston, the actor who launched the revamped Doctor Who in the title role in 2004, quit after only one season. The executive producers of the show, Julie Gardner and Russell T. Davies, thought that their new Doctor, David Tennant, needed to establish himself with the audience and with his assistant without a more established iconic male character like Jack in the picture. Julie and Russell called me in for a meeting at the BBC, and told me they wouldn’t be using Jack in the second series. Naturally, I was devastated.

  When I got home after the meeting, I called my manager, Gavin, and told him what had happened. Even as I explained the gist of the meeting to him, I still couldn’t believe that this might be the end for Captain Jack.

  Fortunately, although I didn’t know it at the time, all was not lost. The next day, Gavin called Andy Pryor, the casting director, and asked what the possibilities were of casting Captain Jack in his own show. There was a silence at the other end of the line. After a significant pause, Andy swore Gavin to secrecy before he explained the idea that Russell and Julie had for a show called Torchwood, in which Captain Jack would be the main character.

  On 7 July 2005, I was in the middle of a week of performances of my cabaret show at Pizza on the Park in London. As my musical director, Bev had flown in from the States earlier for rehearsals, and the show debuted on 4 July and ran until 9 July. Unbeknownst to me, Gavin had invited Julie to come to the cabaret that night. After I’d performed, they planned to tell me the exciting news about Captain Jack.

  Sadly, that morning all hell broke loose in London. Suicide bombers blew up a double-decker bus during the mid-morning rush, after exploding three other bombs on the London Underground. By late morning, it was clear that over fifty innocent people had been killed and hundreds of others were seriously injured. Central London looked like a war zone.

  After the threat of more bombs subsided and I could get an international line to let my family in the States know I was fine, Gavin and I talked about whether or not the show should go on. Public transportation was essentially shut down, and every theatre in the West End planned to be dark that night. I knew I could get through to the venue on my scooter and so, after a long debate, we decided to carry on with the show as planned. I guess I felt that to cancel would be another win for the bombers and, for what it was worth, all of us gathered together that night could be a small tribute to those who’d died.

  Surprisingly, a sizable number of people did turn up. Gavin arranged for Scott to collect Julie from the BBC; he brought her to the venue on the back of his bike. Later, over drinks and dinner, Julie broke the news that while Jack was taking a hiatus from Doctor Who, his own show Torchwood would fill the rift in time. Despite the horrors of the day, to say I was thrilled with the news would be an understatement. I think I may have kissed the waiter.

  Come the third series of Doctor Who, the programme was ready to welcome Captain Jack back on board. When David Tennant and I finally did begin filming together in early spring 2007, the hardest part of the experience for me was to resist speaking to him in a Scottish accent and remain as my American self, which, after a few days on set, ceased to be an issue. I found the set to be a lighter one with David as the Doctor than it had been with Christopher Eccleston in the lead role. I think David is a happier person, whereas I found Chris a bit angsty.

  David and Freema1 are tenants (sorry, couldn’t resist) in the same apartment building on Cardiff Bay where Russell and I live, so by the time David, Freema and I were working together on the set, we’d already helped each other upstairs with shopping, had drinks and dinner at the Bay, and chatted frequently in the elevator, which made establishing our working relationships a breeze.

  Incidentally, our building has become a planned stop on the Cardiff Bay boat tour. The tour guide plays the Doctor Who theme tune as the boat idles in the water beneath the flats, and the guide announces that, ‘This is Doctor Who tower.’ It’s not at all annoying to hear that sound effect at 10 a.m., after a night of filming and having gone to bed ten minutes before …

  The atmosphere on Doctor Who is professional and fun and feels like family. The atmosphere on the Torchwood set is equally as professional and also feels like family, but the set is looser, and a bit wilder. Doctor Who is David’s show and he leads the group. I’m number three in the cast. Whereas in Torchwood, as I’ve mentioned, I’m number one on the cast list. On the Doctor Who set, David’s the brains, I’m the brawn and the assistant is the beauty. We have a good time working together.

  In ‘Utopia’, a few on-screen minutes filled with some witty banter among the three characters have elapsed, but in reality, on the set, time had moved much more slowly. At last, the directors were ready to film the next sequence. Jack, the Doctor and Martha are supposed to sprint down the side of the quarry towards the protective cover of the hive-like city where Derek Jacobi’s Professor Yana awaits with a plan to save humanity.

  Racing in front of us as we pelted down the hill was an ATV quad bike manned by a crew member and the camera operator, who was armed with lights and his camera.

  ‘Action!’

  The quad bike took off, David and I flipped our coats back and ran like mad down the steep gravel hill. Freema was in full-tilt boogie behind us.

  ‘Cut! Go again.’

  And again, and again, and again. Finally, after the fourth or fifth take, I yelled down the hill to the director: ‘This isn’t a fucking marathon! If we’re going to go again, tell him on the bloody bike to slow down.’

  David turned to me and said, ‘Having a bit of trouble, Captain?’

  ‘That’s all right for you to say,’ I laughed, breathlessly, ‘but I’m carrying a rucksack on my back with your fucking hand in a glass jar inside.’

  While filming the final three episodes of season three of Doctor Who, I realized that I’m now the only actor who’s been there since the beginning of the new incarnation of the series. I’ve celebrated two birthdays on Doctor Who, and each time the cast and crew have thrown a party. On one birthday, they gave me a remote-control Dalek, which I added to my growing toy collection, and a delicious cake, which I added to my waistline.

  During the filming of one of the final episodes in the third series, David and I were starving and dinner seemed to be decades away. The prop department told us, ‘No worries, the chips you’re eating in the next scene are real and they’re delicious.’

  For health reasons, we’re not always fed the real thing when filming. When we’re drinking alcohol of any kind, it’s usually iced tea, which looks a lot like whisky or beer; or ginger ale or sparkling water, which can mimic champagne nicely. David and I couldn’t wait for the chips. When the steaming brown packages were finally set in front of us, and the director called, ‘Action,’ David and I could barely control our salivating. By the eighth take, though, the chips were cold and rank, and we both needed a packet of Rennies.

  Once, during a scene in Torchwood, I had to shove an entire jammy doughnut into my mouth. Six takes later, I couldn’t look at the fucking pastry anymore. My throat felt as if it was coated with thick cough syrup and my fillings ached. I’ve never touched a jammy doughnut since, and I used to love them.

  On both sets, it’s possible to perk up a grumpy, tired cast and crew with chocolate. Both productions love their sweeties, especially chocolate. I always bring bags of it on to the set and if anyone needs a sugar rush, they always know John is the candy man.

  Days can be long ones when we’re filming Torchwo
od, since the pace of a TV production involves so many more complicated set-ups and rehearsals than live theatre, where there is no ‘cut’ or ‘do over’. The motto on a TV-show set is very much ‘hurry up and wait’. The result of hours and hours of hanging about is that the cast has become great friends, and we all play well together. In my trailer, for example, I keep a generous supply of NERF toys, balls of all shapes and sizes,2 hula hoops, skipping ropes, and a colourful variety of kites. When we have some down time between scenes, we play – and like any group of grown children, we have nicknames for each other too.

  Eve’s nickname is ‘Evie – I don’t like it’, which I like to pronounce in a whiny Welsh accent. We refer to Burn as ‘Binny Bots’. Naoko will answer to ‘Coco Chanel’ or ‘Ping Pong Buckaroo’, and Gareth responds to ‘Gaz’ or ‘Gaza’. My nickname is ‘Jinny Baza’. I could try to explain the etymology of all these names, but I’m not sure I remember anymore.

  Filming a TV show may not be equal to mining coal, but it’s hard work nonetheless. Our days are twelve hours long and every few weeks in our shooting schedule, we film at night. This means that the only family we see on a regular basis is each other. When we work together, we work hard, and when we play together, we play hard too.

  When we were filming the ‘Countrycide’ episode in the Brecon Beacons National Park, northwest of Cardiff, life imitated art a little for me when we were put up for the night in creepy rooms and cottages, not far from the set where the villagers were eating their neighbours. The shoot for this episode was demanding and long. The Brecon Beacons may be one of the most stunning landscapes in Britain, but a bone-cutting wind blows constantly across the moors and, despite the layers from wardrobe, we could never stay warm while filming. We only managed to succeed in that department after we shut down for the night.