ACTOR John Barrowman has said he doesn’t “regret anything” following allegations of misconduct by him on the sets of Doctor Who and Torchwood that left him “blacklisted completely” from the entertainment industry.
Barrowman has defended his behaviour in an interview with Rona Dougall, airing on STV and STV Player on Thursday at 8:30pm, where he said “everybody was doing outrageous, silly things” on the TV show sets.
The Scottish-American actor appeared as Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and Torchwood between 2005 and 2011 and allegations of him repeatedly exposing himself to co-workers while filming the BBC shows came to light in 2021.
When asked by Dougall if his colleagues agreed that his behaviour was simply “silliness and a bit of a carry on”, Barrowman claims: “Nobody complained.”
Barrowman was pressed by Dougall on whether his role as “the star of the show” complicated the power dynamic on set.
He said: “On Doctor Who, I was not the star. David [Tennant] was the star; I was one of the companions. But everybody was doing outrageous, silly things. It’s just that they weren’t dragged into this situation by a piece of lazy journalism.”
After Dougall asks if his alleged misconduct on set was “basically flashing”, Barrowman said: “No, no, no, no, no. This is where it gets a little misconstrued. I was not walking around flashing people randomly and doing things like that.
“If I were doing a nude scene … they’d say, ‘do you want to go back to the trailer?’ I’d say, ‘no just leave me here’ – it was meant to be a closed set – and I’d say, ‘leave me here and let’s save time, I’ll just stand here and it’ll save time that I don’t have to go back, have to change, then you have to bring me back and we have to start all over again’.
“So, I would stand there, if I was in a nude scene, completely naked, and if somebody walked on set, which they weren’t supposed to or they were, I might just do something like that [jiggles] and it was nothing outrageous. I didn’t see it as outrageous. It was a different time.”
Barrowman was then asked if he regrets his actions, to which he said: “I don’t regret anything.
“It’s not so much regret; it was something that was stupid and silly and it was done.
“I don’t look back and go… because at the time, everybody was laughing. Everybody on set was having a laugh.”
Former Doctor Who colleague Noel Clarke, who was accused of sexually harassing or inappropriately touching multiple crew members in 2021, joked on camera at a 2015 convention about Barrowman’s tendency to expose himself.
“Barrowman was there taking his dick out every five seconds,” he said.
“Every five seconds, just hitting it on everything.”
Barrowman is set to appear on Scotland Tonight to promote his UK tour, Laid Bare.
