John Barrowman (known for Dr. Who and currently a series regular on Arrow) turned to social media today to apologize to his fans for oversleeping, missing his flight to Chicago, and as a result missing most of today at Wizard World Chicago. His apologies were heartfelt, genuine, and accompanied updates on the lengths he was going to to correct the situation, to get onto the next flight, to reschedule events people were looking forward to attending, and through it all he took ownership of what had happened. No excuses, simple honesty – he overslept, but he would make it right, somehow.
It may actually be an understatement to call him a class act.
Over 20+ years of attending conventions of various sizes and fandoms I have seen a variety of celebrities and situations. When cellphones were first coming into use one actor called in to a convention every half hour to ask the organizers to give his line a status update on the traffic jam he was caught in and once again apologize for his thinking three hours for what was normally a two hour drive was plenty of time to get to us for his signing.
In contrast, I have shown up at the appointed time for a signing only to be told it was cancelled, the person in question had another commitment come up… when I asked if I should be excited to see them in some upcoming movie or tv show, I was told, “not unless his golf games are being televised.”
Experiences like that later one are few and far between, in fact I can only think of 2 or 3 in all these years of going to at least one convention a year. But they leave an impression… just as John Barrowman’s posting videos of apology, and live-tweeting from his flight to Chicago leaves an incredibly positive impression.
Barrowman has been re-scheduled so he will be doing photo-ops at the Chicago Wizard World Comic-Con at 8:00 Saturday night, his panel will be at 10:30 am Sunday morning, and he says he will be signing all day Sunday, when not at that panel — and the look of seriousness and determination in his eyes in these videos tells me he means business.
Just as he so often looks serious about having fun, and sharing the joy of life in so many of his social media posts, it is clear the next 36 hours are about putting right what did not happen this morning.
If you aren’t already connected to John Barrowman on social media, you might want to at least bookmark his pages… today was the proof in the pudding that John puts the internet to good use, and cares about his fans, and keeping them informed.