Scottish-American gay actor and performer John Barrowman returns to TV land with Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins 2024, three years after his Doctor Who scandal came to light ultimately leading to his removal from the show.
John Barrowman has faced multiple allegations of misconduct throughout his career, with accusations of exposing his penis to fellow cast members on various occasions and across different shows. These incidents reportedly occurred in 2008, during his time on Doctor Who and on a live BBC Radio 1 broadcast, for which both Barrowman and the network apologized. In 2018, Barrowman admitted to exposing himself during a performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard. While his actions were hidden from the audience by a piano, they were fully visible to his fellow actors.
As a result of these events resurfacing, many of Barrowman’s previous and planned appearances on Doctor Who and Torchwood were either removed or scrapped in 2021. Later that year, he was also dropped as a judge on Dancing on Ice as a result of the scandal. According to the Guardian, most of these allegations were described by witnesses as “inappropriate acts” rather than anything predatory in nature, making cast and crew members “uncomfortable” but not “unsafe.”
In 2021, Barrowman issued a public statement:
“My high-spirited behaviour which was only ever intended in good humour to entertain colleagues on set and backstage has been well-documented, including in my autobiographies and even in song. There were a couple of times during filming where I’d resort to tomfoolery, but none of this was ever intended nor interpreted as being sexual in nature.” Adding, “I have apologised for this previously.”
After three years, Barrowman’s return to our TV screens is short-lived after he was announced as a cast member of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins 2024. Roughly 2-3 hours into filming, Barrowman quit the show after seeing their living quarters according to one of his cast mates. However, Barrowman clarifies that he actually quit the show as a result of coming face-to-face with the screaming soldiers and that prior to filming, the director put them up to challenges to test out their grit for the show. The show has been known to be physically demanding due to its military-style training.
He told The Mirror:
“The one thing that I would never do in my life, and it makes me upset thinking about this, is that people would think I would harm a woman, that I would do something. And to be called a sexual harasser, I would never do anything to harm a woman or a man or anybody, transgender, you name it. That’s just not who this man is.”
He said about quitting Celebrity SAS:
“Because of the industry that we are in, there is going to be some backlash…” He adds, “However dramatic the exit was, it was something that you have to be true to yourself and honest with yourself when you’re doing it.”
Barrowman admitted that being cancelled made him depressed, leading to contemplations of taking his own life. He tells The Mirror:
“I had thoughts of suicide, going out and trying to do certain things and harm myself, and a couple of times debating how I was going to kill myself. It was only the thought of the heartbreak it would cause his parents and husband Scott Gill, that John thought better of it. The thing was I couldn’t do it because of my family and friends.”
Right now, John says that he continues to work on himself, spending most of his time with husband Scott and his parents.
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins 2024 premieres in the UK on channel 4 on September 22 after being filmed in New Zealand last year.
Sources: The Guardian, The Mirror, Wales Online