‘All of us felt like we had touched gold': What It Feels Like for a Girl, the BBC's electric coming-of-age tale

When the BBC was casting its adaptation of Paris Lees's autobiography, What It Feels Like for a Girl, it wasn't the only one wrestling with how to find the right actor to play the lead in a biopic. 'Cher did an interview,' smiles Lees, 'and she said: 'We just can't find somebody that's Cher.' I was like: 'Same, girl. I hear your struggles.' So me and Cher have been going through it.' Sitting next to Lees is the actor they went with, Ellis Howard, who you may remember as the sapling Ivan VI in HBO series Catherine the Great, but who you will never have seen being this luminous.
'In the beginning, we were looking for a trans person,' Lees says. She and Howard are sharing a Zoom screen, and it's not so much that they look similar as that they both look so cinematic, they seem to match – 'But then I just knew, the moment I saw Ellis, that this cheeky, cheeky person could do it.'
Lees is known in the public eye via a series of triumphant firsts: the first trans columnist for Vogue, the first trans woman to present on Radio 1, on Channel 4. But her early life was harsh, brutal at times. She was relentlessly bullied at school for being gay, and carried the weight of her father's homophobia, expressed in both formless anger and embarrassment. She became a 'rent boy' when she was 14, but was astonished when she read, in a review of her book in Grazia that she'd been abused. 'Then I thought: 'Hang on a minute. What else would you call that?' It took me a while to realise that was abusive. When people are vulnerable, when they're told they're worthless, that they're almost half a person, you seek validation in the wrong places. It makes me incredibly sad, but it was really important to show my perspective at that time, not my perspective now.'
Howard's performance is exquisite: subtle and daring, true to the fact that it would be years before the teenage sex work processed as a violation – and at the time Lees was thrilled about earning all those fivers. 'When you force people into the shadows, don't be surprised when they go fucking dark,' Howard says. 'You've got to silence the part of your brain that goes: 'I am an adult, I am a leftwing progressive.' You've got to go to a place of wonderment and curiosity.'
Paris Lees's perspective in the book, which comes across as strongly on the screen, is joyful – this is an incredibly buoyant coming-of-age story, as Howard describes. 'When we were cast, all of us felt like we had touched gold, here. Whether it's our queerness, whether it's our class, whether it's the scars we've been given that make us feel so seen by it, everyone came to give it their all. How often do you get these unicorn projects, that feel so alive? It felt so rare.'
Lees gives her adolescent self the pseudonym Byron, and their story opens in 2000, when things were bleak as hell for a gay teenager in a suburban, declining bit of Nottinghamshire. But this is very much not how they felt at the time: 'I definitely had a sense that things are getting better,' says Lees. 'We thought this was the end of history. I had this sense that people were living longer, wages were going up, flights were getting cheaper, they were cloning sheep. It felt like there was going to be more democracy, there was hope, there was a future. We were going to get there with gay rights. I didn't dare to believe we'd get there with the other stuff.'
It's beautifully told in the drama, through friendships with divas and ketamine in nightclubs, that to be young in that era may have felt like a train wreck, but didn't feel hopeless. Howard, who was born in 1997, chips in, 'I'm nostalgic for a time I wasn't born in. Listening to P talk about the possibility of Blair and Brown, talk about a time when the NHS functioned, when school ceilings weren't caving in on people's heads, maybe I've doctored that into my brain, but I feel like I can remember a time when progress was possible. Although if I'm honest, my political awareness really began with austerity.'
If homophobic bullying was a thing of the past by the 2010s, 'God, no one told my fucking school,' he says. 'No one told Norris Green in Liverpool. I was definitely ostracised. I come from a family of 'aaaah' blokes [impossible to fully convey the meaning, or mad charm of that 'aaaah' - sort of aggro and in-your-face]. I just had this unwavering sense of, I won't be bullied. You're not gonna get me. One of the reasons why I felt so seen by the book, is because this is a kid who was resilient to a mythic level. Your conditions can harden you. That was my experience of school, anyway.'
The double-edged nostalgia for that time – post-industrial drudgery leavened by the smell of escape – is particularly poignant to watch now. Nobody in 2000 (trust me on this, I was there) would have predicted that 25 years later, trans people would be openly vilified in the media and drag queens castigated as perverts. It feels as if we inched forward to Scandinavia on LGBTQI+ rights, only to hurtle back to Weimar. Lees says it's more complicated than that. 'It feels like there's been a weird reversal. The public conversation in the media and politics has become very toxic. But think back: when did you ever see somebody working in Boots, that was trans, in the year 2000? When was your GP trans? When were trans people ever allowed to participate in life or society? Nobody had a job; you either had to be a prostitute or you had to not be out.'
She breaks off – 'I'm a little bit guarded about this, because it's obviously relevant, but I don't want everything I do to be framed within trans activism. I hate it when people call me a trans activist. I'm not involved in activism now. Obviously, I am trans. I can't escape that. I feel like I could have died, somebody could have shot me, I could have been revived on the operating table, and the headline would still be about being trans.'
Both Lees and Howard see What It Feels Like … as being an exploration of the marginalisation of poverty at least as much as it is about trans identity – if not more so. Again, it's complicated: sometimes sex and gender identity cancels out class identity, in the sense that Lees thinks 'being trans has possibly opened doors for me that wouldn't have [otherwise] been opened, to a working-class person'. Other times, the world demands that you pick a lane. 'Often times, as an actor, as a writer, I'm thinking, who am I today? Am I this scrappy working-class kid? Or am I the sensitive queer boy? And those things can't reconcile. To be swallowed in this industry, one has to present oneself in a fixed way. Who gets to live authentically is so determined by your class.' She adds: 'It's a really big part of my identity, just coming from a scarcity mindset. When you grow up and you've got nothing, that has a huge effect on how I live my life, how I think about things, my sense of internal safety and security.'
'Drama is so fucking posh,' Lees continues – not with indignation, almost amused, like she knows she speaks for pretty well everyone but the rest of the world are too polite to mention it. 'I'm just so sick of it. We love all the actors with the posh accents, I get it, but let's just make the space for some other people. It's so boring, the Jane Austenness of it all, the comedy of manners; let's have some real messy stories about real shit that happens. I love that we've got so many working-class actors on this show. The only place working-class people are represented is reality TV. I've had enough of the double-barrelled names. Working-class people are lyrical, we're just not given a voice.'
And if it's a rare oversight by the class gatekeepers that this messy, exuberant story got on to TV, it also breaks out of a predictable aesthetic. 'It's so gorgeous to be in a working-class project that is extended beyond the kitchen sink, something that has so much colour and is so visually arresting,' says Howard. 'It has a cinematic feel and scale that is normally only lent to middle-class stories [but is here] given to a working-class story set in the Midlands.'
The whole thing has been a white-knuckle ride from the start, Lees says, 'A bit like if they said: 'We're gonna take a picture of you naked. It's going to be displayed in public. But don't worry, we're going to get good people in, you'll have lots of creative control.' Are you ever going to be happy with that picture? This is made out of my core memories.' It has led, however, to Lees's relationship with Howard – part spirit-animal, part younger-self transformed – as well as some other beautiful performances. Both single out Laura Haddock as Byron's mother, who Lees says managed to powerfully channel her mum, without necessarily looking very alike. And the ensemble of fallen divas – endearing, spiky performances from Laquarn Lewis and Hannah Jones, was 'such a headfuck for me', Lees says, as 'there are the actual fallen divas, the real people. Then there are the characters that I created, based on them, in the book. Then there's the TV interpretations, and the actors playing them, who formed their own breakaway group. A lot of what you see on screen, that is just them fucking around.'
What It Feels Like for a Girl starts 3 June, 9pm, BBC Three.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Times

29 minutes ago

• Times

This season's It ingredient — plus more trends to know

Meet summer's answer to wild garlic: meadowsweet, a pretty (and delicious) wildflower with tall-stemmed sprays of cream-coloured flowers in season from now until September. With a distinctive taste (a medley of hay, almond and vanilla), it's popping up on the most creative menus. In Ormskirk, Lancashire, at the Michelin-starred Barn at Moor Hall, the raspberry tart topped with meadowsweet mousse is the go-to pud, while the cool Edinburgh bistro Leftfield uses the flower in its Leftfield 75 cocktail (gin, cava and homemade meadowsweet fizz), a riff on the classic French 75. Down in London, Counter 71's strawberry sablé tart comes doused in meadowsweet custard, while James Knappett's two-Michelin-star Kitchen Table uses the bloom in its bread course: featherlight Parker House rolls, truffle butter and meadowsweet honey (top). Dig in. • Read more fashion advice and style inspiration from our experts Looking for a hip place to visit? Heading to the southeastern European peninsula — aka the Balkans — is without doubt top of the discerning traveller's list this summer. Last year Tirana was the 'vacay de jour', while this year it's Sofia. But the area is also enjoying a fashion moment in the sun, with designers drawing on the region's rich history. The Romanian designer Alexandra Sipa is creating a buzz with her e-waste upcycling, and the Transylvanian label Abodi made the madcap castle headpiece Jaden Smith wore at the Grammys. In the art world, the Serbian provocateur Marina Abramovic is heading to Factory International in Manchester in October with a new show called Balkan Erotic Epic, but for a taste of all this from home, make a Balkan breakfast: the viral TikTok picky-bits brekkie of raw veg, bread, meat and cheese. Washed down with a glass of rakia, of course.

Times

30 minutes ago

• Times

‘Irreplaceable' bronze statues stolen during manor house festival

It was the first day of the summer jazz festival at Iford Manor. The sun beamed on the blooming gardens and the sound of a saxophone filled the air but the contentment was about to come to an abrupt end. On Friday morning, the owners of the country estate near Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, woke to discover that four bronze sculptures had been taken from the grade I listed gardens overnight. Among the missing pieces was a copy of Rome's Capitoline Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, including its plinth, which had been in the gardens for 120 years, a pair of symmetrical bronze fawns inspired by those at the ancient Villa dei Papyri in Herculaneum, and a bust of Antinous. Marianne Cartwright-Hignett, 42, who runs the estate with her husband William, also 42, said: 'The policeman asked for a victim statement and I said, 'well, you know, it's not my statue'. And he said, 'oh, who owns it?' I said, 'no, no, no, this is everyone's loss'. This is a huge loss.' The garden, which has been open to the public since about 1910, receives about 20,000 visitors during the six months of the year it is open. Cartwright-Hignett said: 'It feels a million miles away from everywhere. When you go into the garden, you're not sure which country you're in, you're not sure which century you're in. There's a cloister at the back which has a line from a Tennyson poem. The inscribed line says 'a haunt of ancient peace'. 'It's a really tranquil, healing space … it feels like someone's just ripped the soul out of the garden.' After she posted the news on Instagram, the BBC gardening presenter Monty Don replied to say he was 'very sorry and angry'. Cartwright-Hignett, who lives on the estate with her husband and two sons, Horatio, six and Freddie, three, added: 'Gardeners' World have been here a couple of times in the past and Monty Don did a lovely episode of his series of Big Dreams, Small Spaces here.' Wiltshire police are investigating, and asking antique dealers and auction houses to be on alert for the stolen pieces. Cartwright-Hignett is particularly keen to see the Romulus and Remus statue returned. She said: 'That's kind of irreplaceable. The curator of the Capitoline at the time, in the late 1800s, let the estate owner take a direct copy from the original. We believe it's the last time a direct copy was allowed to be taken. Ironically, it was here for safe keeping in case the one in the Capitoline ever got lost or stolen.' She added: 'My dearest hope is that no one's stupid enough to melt it down. I just hate the thought of this being in someone's private garden where one person gets to see it.' In 2011 a Henry Moore sculpture worth £3 million was stolen from his foundation in Hertfordshire. It was later believed to have been melted down. Earlier this year a bronze statue worth £60,000 was stolen from the home of the artist Anne Curry in Essex. A 17th-century 'Shepherd Boy' statue was stolen from an outbuilding in Pickering, Yorkshire, last year — it still hasn't been found — and in March two men were sentenced for damaging and stealing a Paddington Bear statue in Newbury in Berkshire.

Daily Record

an hour ago

• Daily Record

Pride of Scotland hosts Elaine C Smith and Sanjeev Kohli are gearing up for the biggest night of the year

The comedy duo can't wait to celebrate Scotland's unsung heroes at our People's oscars. With just one day to go until the Pride of Scotland Awards, hosts Elaine C Smith and Sanjeev Kohli are getting ready to "gie it laldy" for the nation's unsung heroes. The comedy duo are taking the helm again at our People's Oscars and can't wait to give our inspirational 2025 winners a night they will remember forever. ‌ Despite being two of the biggest names in Scottish showbiz both admit when it comes to Pride's incredible unsung heroes, they are the ones who are left starstruck. ‌ Sanjeev, who is one of the standout stars of new Netflix hit Department Q, said: 'The Pride of Scotland Awards are massive and the number of big names who turn out to celebrate our nation's most inspiring people is phenomenal. 'But what the unsung heroes don't realise is that they are the ones who leave the celebrities starstruck because their selfless achievements are far greater. 'As a judge I already know their jaw-dropping stories of bravery and compassion so when you meet them in real life you can't help but be affected. 'They may have eyes like saucers when they see all the stars on the red carpet tomorrow night but mine will be the size of dinner plates when the winners join me and Elaine on stage.' The Still Game star added: 'This will be my third year as host and it's the most fantastic and heart-warming and uplifting event in my calendar. ‌ 'I feel we owe it to all the winners to give them as good a night as possible - it's the least we can do after what they do so selflessly for others." Sanjeev, who starred in BBC hit comedy Dinosaur, admitted he has lost count of all the stand-out moments over the years. He said: 'Last year it was Wilson the miniature Shetland pony in a kilt that really got me. He was wearing two wee pairs of shoes from Build-A-Bear. I truly never thought I would see a pony wearing Converse. ‌ 'His adorable outfit aside - the work Wilson and his owners Elaine and John Sangster do at Therapy Ponies Scotland is incredible. 'Elaine said their wee horses sense when someone needs a boost. I think we should send a whole herd of horses into war zones as everyone would instantly drop their weapons.' ‌ The former River City actor added: 'Another of the 2024 winners who struck a chord with me was John Aitchison, the firefighter who has helped set up the first fire service on Mount Everest. 'The world is getting more insular and intolerant. Just look at Trump deporting anyone who isn't American and then you have Scots guys like John going around the world saying humans are humans and it doesn't matter about the colour of your skin or DNA. That really speaks to me as the son of an immigrant.' From acts of kindness and selfless bravery to raising millions for charity the Daily Record Pride of Scotland Awards with P&O Cruises will salute the nation's unsung heroes. ‌ A host of stars from the worlds of TV, film, music, sport and politics will descend on The Hilton Glasgow tomorrow night to honour the winners. Rob C Nesbitt legend Elaine agrees with Sanjeev about it being one of the most uplifting nights of the year and an antidote to what is going on in the world right now. The gran-of-two, who was given the Freedom of Glasgow earlier this year, said: 'Pride of Scotland brings the light in dark times. ‌ 'There are so many horrific and heartbreaking events happening in the world just now from the situation in the Middle East to the terrible aeroplane crash in India. 'These awards are a reminder to everyone that there is still so much good in the world with folk looking out for their neighbours and going above and beyond to help others in their communities. 'I did a Sunday Mail column for many years and I used to include an 'Angel of the Week' section to highlight the ordinary Scots who are doing extraordinary things. ‌ 'The room tomorrow night will be full to the rafters with 'angels' who are quietly making a massive difference to the world which gladdens my soul and lifts my heart.' She added: 'This is my fifth Pride and like Sanjeev said there have been so many magical moments but one of my all time favourites was in 2023 when the hard man of football Graeme Souness started crying on stage while talking about his hero – Isla Grist. "The teenager has epidermolysis bullosa – a rare and painful skin disorder which causes her skin to burn and blister at the slightest touch. She inspired the football legend to swim the channel and raise £4.5million for drug trials – just incredible. ‌ 'Another standout came in 2022 when I spotted Lulu in the audience and started belting out the first few notes of Shout as a gag. Next thing I knew she was on stage singing her hit and getting everyone to join in - to this day I believe she only did it to stop me singing. 'Last year seeing wee Wilson trotting along the red carpet in his kilt will be something I will never forget - they really are awards like no other.' ‌ Elaine, who became a gran for the second time last year, admitted the Children of Courage get her every year and paid tribute to 2022 winner Zac Gunn who passed away a few weeks ago. She said: 'I have to gird my loins every year to stop myself from greetin.' The kids just melt my heart especially wee Zac who passed away this month just weeks after having a long-awaited lung transplant. I will never forget his huge grin when Paw Patrol came on stage and presented him with his award. 'That wee child fought so hard to live and his death is heartbreaking. My love goes out to his dad Gordon, mum Ashley and brother Jacob.' ‌ Dad-of-three Sanjeev added: 'As a daddy the kids' stories have me in bits every time. Picking the winners from a shortlist is so tough and I feel so guilty - it's like someone telling me I have to pick a favourite child from my own three. 'It's truly astonishing what the Children and Teenagers of Courage bring to this world - such huge altruism from such little people. 'Maybe if adults channelled their less jaded and cynical attitude to life the world would be a better place. Most of these kids are suffering yet they still strive to support and raise funds for others. They are truly remarkable.' ‌ We launched our search for our local heroes of 2025 back in January and were inundated with thousands of nominations from across the nation. Categories include The Emergency Services Award, Teenager of Courage, Young Fundraiser, Outstanding Bravery, The King's Trust Young Achiever, Special Recognition and The P&O Cruises Inspiration Award. One of the biggest names attending tomorrow night's glittering ceremony is Succession legend Brian Cox, who is getting ready to take the stage at the Dundee Rep in new play Make It Happen about the Bank of Scotland's role in the 2008 financial crash. ‌ Other stars who will be honouring the winners include Sheli McCoy aka Sabre, singer Susan Boyle, Star Wars actor Denis Lawson, singers Nathan Evans, Calum Bowie and Cammy Barnes and Strictly's JJ Chalmers and Dr Punam Krishan. Love Island's Paige Turley and Saint Phnx's Stevie Jukes will be going live from the red carpet and presenter Laura Anderson will be manning the Pride of Scotland bar. ‌ First Minister John Swinney will also be there to celebrate the best of Scotland and there will be a performance from Britain's Got Talent finalist Vinnie McKee. - The 2025 Pride of Scotland winners will be revealed in an 8-page pullout in tomorrow's Daily Record - You can catch all the red carpet action on the Pride of Scotland Facebook, Instagram and YouTube page from 5.30pm tomorrow night