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Current mood:	giggly
Entry tags:	dr who, ianto fucking jones, picspam, the sad state of tv

Gay Times June 09 interview with John Barrowman and Gareth David-Lloyd
"Sit between us, we'll spit roast ya," John Barrowman grins as I ponder where to sit to interview him and his Torchwood co-star Gareth David-Lloyd. With it being 9am - and me almost choking on my croissant - I venture that it's a little early for that.

"It's never too early in the morning," Barrowman jokes.

GT is at the annual press launch for the Doctor Who spin-off show - this time being held in a converted courthouse where Oscar Wilde was sentenced, no less - but things are a little different from when we last saw the specialist investigation group. The Cardiff based sci-fi drama series has moved again, finally reaching BBC One.

Billed as the television event of the summer, this series will air over five nights under the umbrella Torchwood: Children of Earth.

While Barrowman is now a stalwart in the world of Who and 'Wood, David-Lloyd's character of Ianto Jones has evolved, just as the relationship between the men of Torchwood has grown. So it's no surprise that with Russell T Davies back as head writer for this mini-season, the storyline for the couple has been ramped up.

"I didn't really see it as an issue," David-Lloyd says. "It's just another relationship on television. I hope the days are gone when it is an issue for anyone."

Barrowman interjects. "We want to continue to keep the normality of male/male, female/female relationships on television, and I think it's important that they have that on BBC One. I'm also with Gareth - I believe that we don't make an issue of it in Torchwood, we treat it as complete normality.

Maybe it is ground-breaking in a sense, but it is important to have those things out there because young people see it. Captain Jack Harkness has been in Doctor Who and had full male-on-male kisses in Doctor Who. In fact, the whole Jack sexuality thing in the first series of Torchwood kind of went over everybody's head. No-one caught it! What's really hysterically ironic about this relationship on television, and we found this out when we did conventions, is that women want to see us together. They don't want to see Jack and Gwen. Isn't that right? Go figure - women wanting to see two men cop off!"

David-Lloyd flashes a cheeky smile. "I was just saying it's mostly women that empathise with Ianto as well, they want to feel like they're in his shoes rather than Gwen's."

They're both being tight-lipped about the future of the characters - David-Lloyd says it's "left open-ended" while Barrowman believes that the way Children of Earth is written, "it could be the final". But both are keen to do more.

"You can make Ianto a Time Lord, which is what I want," David-Lloyd beams. Barrowman laughs. "Ianto's the new Doctor. It's not really Matt Smith."

Would either consider returning to Doctor Who, or maybe even the other spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures?

"Doctor Who, yeah," David-Lloyd nods. "I'd prefer to stay with Torchwood because it's the type of humour of the shows I'm into. Sarah Jane's [viewers are] a little young."

Barrowman shakes his head. "I don't think Jack would go into Sarah Jane." I ask him to stress he's referring to the show and not the character and he roars with laughter. "He probably would, because she's pretty hot!"

But speaking of getting busy, David-Lloyd appears to misunderstand my question when I ask how much action their characters will be getting this time round.

"There's more action in this season," he begins to explain. "My job is upped because we've all got more responsibility, haven't we?"

His co-star and onscreen boyfriend gives him a look. "He's talking about sex," he deadpans, before bursting out laughing. "That was a good way for Gareth to try and get off that question."

David-Lloyd tries again. "He's more reserved," he says. "He's quite protective and private about his relationship with Jack. It's actually something that he struggles with, it takes him a moment. He's fallen in love, basically."

Barrowman agrees. "The relationship's reached a new level. There have been some rough scenes with Jack and Ianto in the past. There's that one where we were up in the greenhouse... They're basically having a wank together and Gwen catches them. I was doing it on Gareth's thigh because obviously we're not going to do the real thing..."

"I was quite nervous because that was the first time I'd taken my top off on television," David-Lloyd recalls.

"And your pants were down," Barrowman notes.

"And my pants were down."

As soon as you're shirtless these days, it's screen-grabbed and online, I note. "That's one reason why Russell doesn't write a lot of nude scenes for us," Barrowman explains. "Because it used to be that when you did a nude scene, there was a reason for doing it. It would be on television and that was it. Now if you do a nude scene it goes immediately onto the web, so it doesn't have the same impact as it did before. Russell tries to write scenes that are around that nudity aspect because it's not special, it's not a one-off. If you watch this series, I'm in a quarry completely stark bollock naked."

David-Lloyd starts chuckling deeply. "And the families above..."

"The crew were going, 'Are you okay with this?' and I was like, 'Guys, if they haven't seen a willy before, then there's a big problem." Barrowman flashes that famous smile before turning to his co-star." They've had to pixelate out my nuts."

"They had to what?"

He explains. "Apparently they've had to paint them out because they're too prominent in one of the sequences."

David-Lloyd answers firmly when asked if he's ever had his nuts painted on Torchwood.

"No. My nuts have stayed securely in my pants."

"Not on camera, anyway!" Barrowman grins. "We're a family, put it that way... We're very comfortable with each other."

But we digress (rather rapidly). We're supposed to be talking about the leading men in a leading BBC award-winning drama being queer on Aunty Beeb's flagship channel.

"Ianto is not confused, but he's fallen in love with a man," Barrowman explains. "He never saw himself as being gay, but for the first time he's fallen in love with a man. It's something new that's happened to him. His sister raises the issue. She's like, 'We don't care. Do you like him? Are you happy?' So he's more worried about it himself, which is true of a lot of gay men. They're more worried about telling people when other people actually don't give a shit. And that's the beauty, I think, of that scene.

"That's what Russell does beautifully. Jack, he's omnisexual in his time period, but if it was today you'd say he was gay or bisexual or whatever, but the thing with Ianto, which I think is great, is that there are people out there like that. They're sexual, they don't define themselves. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't define yourself because you know me, I stand up for the boys and the girls and all the rights, but there are some people out there who do stuff in their bedroom which is very much like what gay men and women do, but it doesn't make them gay, because they're with a woman. If that makes any sense."

David-Lloyd pipes up. "Strap one on love!"

"What you do sexually doesn't define your sexuality, it's who you fall in love with that defines your sexuality," Barrowman says. "There's a lot of straight men who like it up the bum."

And why wouldn't they?

"It feels good. And that's why they like it. They love their wives and their wives like to do it to them, that's perfectly okay."

David-Lloyd cuts in. "A lot of men like to do their girlfriends up the bum."

"That's right. So what's wrong with that?"

The pair high-five each other and the increasingly nervous looking BBC press officer tells us we need to wrap it up. Barrowman laughs. "We've reached the up-the-bum-stage!"