Arrow Execs Talk Barrowman Casting

By Andrew Reynolds, October 12, 2012 - Doctor Who - no comments

Producers of Arrow – the reinvention of DC’s Green Arrow for the CW network – have been talking about casting Torchwood star John Barrowman.

Playing a character known as ‘well-dressed man’ it took a leap of faith to get Barrowman to sign on to the role.

John Barrowman, Captain Jack Harkness himself.Producer Andrew Kreisberg told Collider:

I’m a lifelong Doctor Who fan – like Peter Davison/ Colin Baker lifelong fan. So, when John Barrowman’s name came up for this part… I basically laid out the plan that we had for his character, and who he is and how he relates to everybody and what’s going on, because we didn’t have a lot written.

I said, ‘So, I guess I’m asking you to take a leap of faith’. He said, ‘It’s funny, seven years ago, Russell T Davies told me to take a leap of faith with him, and I hear your passion and creativity the way I heard his. So, let’s do it!’ That was the best phone call I’ve ever gotten.”

Kreisberg also praised Barrowman’s versatility and promises a ‘completely different’ role to that of Captain Jack Harkness:

He’s just such a tremendously talented actor, and [his casting is] one of the things we’re most proud of with the show.

Continuing the Barrowman love in, fellow producer Marc Guggenheim also praised Barrowman, calling him ‘incredibly magnetic and incredibly charming’ and that he hadn’t seen Torchwood before casting him in the role.

I come to his performance on my own terms. [John] lights up the screen and he really energises the actors that he has scenes with.

Arrow airs on Wednesday nights at 8/7c on The CW and will debut on Sky One in the UK on October 22.

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Everyone has a favourite Doctor and mine - just for his honesty, his fairness and his ability to not notice the Master's awful, awful disguises/anagrams (Sir Gilles Estram!?!) - has to be the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. The stories didn’t serve him as well as his acting served those stories.