John Barrowman invites us to discuss last summer’s Torchwood: Children Of Earth mini-series, where Captain Jack Harkness battled aliens taking over the minds of children everywhere. You can catch a rerun on Watch…

Is it fair to say you have a lot of interests?
Yeah, I do have a lot of interests. I like cars, I like artwork, I like things that are collectible, but they have to mean something to the person. There’s no point in just getting stuff that’s collectible just to have it and put it away in a box. Now I do have some things like that, which I’m going to get rid of because I did that in the beginning. I thought, ‘Oh, to be a collector you have to collect things that you have to put away and hide’. No. As things have moved on I’ve learnt that if you can buy nice things for yourself – which I was never able to do before – you’ve got to use them.

You do have a huge collection don’t you, including a lot of Torchwood stuff.
Oh yeah. Masses. From Doctor Who and onward, Torchwood has changed my life. Torchwood is allowing me to have this house. Torchwood is allowing me to do things that I never thought I’d be able to do. So I collect all this stuff.
I have all the dolls from the series. I also have all the Doctor Who-related figures. I’m hands on when it comes to approving the designs of the faces and things like that. Also, when I have suggestions for things that fans might like, I pass them on, because I am a sci-fi fan myself and would love to see that thing on my bookshelf or in a display cabinet.

Is there anything specific that you have mentioned?
I said a long time ago about wanting a 12-inch doll. But now Tonner Dolls are developing a 15-inch doll. Tonner are one of the best doll makers of character dolls. And they’ve done these fantastic dolls of us. I have all of their superhero series. They’re on top of a closet, waiting to be displayed, because we’re going to redo some things in this house. So I’m chuffed about that.

Do they get it wrong with the dolls sometimes?
Yeah. The first sculpt for the Captain Jack small figure for Doctor Who, I didn’t like the face. So I said to them I didn’t like it. I think it went back three or four times. But most of the time, it’s not just about me saying I don’t like something. They generally agree. The thing is, that’s your image being used for a very long time. And once they get the mould right, that’s the mould they’re going to use. You want them to get it right.

Do you have a say in the Torchwood comic strip?
My sister [Carole E. Barrowman] and I wrote one for the Torchwood magazine! I do follow the magazine, I read the magazine. I like to read the comics. The fact that Carole and I sat down and wrote this comic strip was just great. We had a blast doing it. And, actually, we got a lot of feedback that they want us to do more. Torchwood magazine asked if I’d be a guest editor of the magazine at one point.

Were you expecting the response you got to Children Of Earth?
I’m just the actor in that sense, although we’re told what’s going to happen. We have to trust what the writers do, and who better to trust than Russell T Davies and the rest of the team of writers who were involved? They absolutely got it right. We had no idea.
When we did series one, at that time – and we’ve stopped calling it this – but it was a spin-off of Doctor Who (the mother ship, I call it), which you cannot deny because of Captain Jack – but we wanted to make ourselves our own. And we had to trust the writers. We wanted to do something that was different but still be loyal to the brand that created us, if that makes any sense. Separate ourselves from it.
 
Did the Torchwood team expect the audience to get so upset by Children Of Earth? Some were quite voracious.
They were, and I totally understand why they were, but they have to understand the reason why the decision was made to do what we did. Although I’m sad to see Gareth David-Lloyd go and I’m sad to see Ianto Jones go, it was a decision that I thought was a great writing twist. We didn’t expect that on the evening it happened Twitter would crash because there were more hits about Ianto than Michael Jackson. We didn’t realise that there would be memorials for him in Cardiff Bay. We didn’t realise that they would start campaigns. The Bring Ianto Back group I think raised upwards of £20,000 for Children In Need, to do something positive rather than be negative, which was fantastic.
A lot of people were saying they weren’t going to watch Torchwood again, but I have a funny feeling they might just come back. I’d really like them to, because whatever happens, it would be nice to see those audiences back.

By Graham Kibble-White