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• Sat May 31 2025

'A cry from the council estate' - the trans teen drama that pulls no punches

6 hours ago Share Save Emma Saunders Culture reporter Share Save

BBC/Hera/Enda Bowe Byron is played by Ellis Howard, who has also appeared in Netflix teen horror Red Rose

What It Feels Like For A Girl. A fairly innocuous title for a teen TV series, right? But the stars of BBC Three's new drama say it's taken on a deeper resonance since the show was filmed last year. That's because it's a coming-of-age story about a gender-questioning teenager growing up in a working class town near Nottingham. And it's hitting our screens just a few weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that the terms "woman" and "sex" in the 2010 Equality Act "refer to a biological woman and biological sex". While some groups have celebrated the decision, some trans campaigners have expressed dismay. Given the court's ruling, even the title of the drama is divisive. Some will take issue with it as it is inspired by the autobiography of the same name from trans writer, journalist and trans rights campaigner Paris Lees. And that's because they believe that Lees isn't a woman - and that the Supreme Court judgement supports them. Hannah Jones, who plays sharp-tongued trans sex worker Sasha in the series, acknowledges the timing: "The title of our show changed overnight. You know, the whole meaning of it is exactly what is going on in the news right now. What does it feel like for a girl? The trans narrative is so different for so many people." Maya Forstater, who set up the campaign group Sex Matters, has told the BBC she strongly opposes the drama's narrative: "Presenting the idea of an effeminate boy 'becoming a girl' as an edgy coming-of-age story is presenting delusion as self-discovery." The series is a raw, hedonistic, brutal - but often hilarious - tale of Byron (Ellis Howard), a 15-year-old boy who is trying to find his identity and is desperate to escape the small-mindedness of his home town. In the heady days of the early 2000s, the teen (based on Lees) is taken under the wing of "The Fallen Divas" while clubbing in Nottingham, a group of hedonistic, anarchic outsiders who soon become a second family. But beyond the hardcore party lifestyle, the dark underbelly of an exploitative sex work industry lures Byron in.

BBC/Hera/Enda Bowe Jake Dunn plays Liam, an intimidating man of few words

Local drug dealer Liam - played by Jake Dunn - is an intoxicating influence on Byron, embarking on an underage relationship with this young wannabee while also enticing the youngster into selling sex. Grooming and child abuse are a constant backdrop. "Essentially, he's Byron's pimp," explains Dunn. As can be the case in such instances, Byron is attracted to what he sees as someone with power, his own flat and independence - something he wants himself. "He [Liam] is very enigmatic," explains Dunn. "They [he and Byron] actually share a very similar back story. They sort of become magnetised to each other. [It's like] watching an unstoppable force meet an immovable object. "Part of Liam's obsession and desire towards Byron is because Byron reminds Liam of Liam at that age." Dunn, who hails from Nottingham himself, based Liam "off of two people I knew from Nottingham and a lad from Derby who really stuck in my head when I was a teenager, their voices and the way they acted". He adds: "At times Liam does feel very vulnerable in a strange way, and then he's also really hardened. And I think when you're working class from a place with no prospects, you're a survivalist and you'll do anything. "He looks out for himself in a way that is really scary and coercive." The drama also doesn't shy away from a serious crime committed by Liam and Byron (which led to serious consequences for Lees in real life as a teenager).

Getty Images Paris Lees' book What It Feels Like For A Girl was published in 2021

Lees has previously said that, "for me, personally, the much more interesting journey of this book is the class transition", having become middle class in later life, after growing up working class. "I was living in a different city, I had a different accent, I had a different way of making money, shall we say, a different set of friends. I can't connect that with my life today. And a lot of it is the class thing," Lees told the Guardian in 2021. Dunn says of the drama: "The most exciting intersectionality of it is with the working class. What is that experience going to be for you if you are trans... and you are poor? What is the survivalist mechanism that exists for those people? "It's a hard watch but at no point did the humour leave, at no point did the heart leave. And that's a testament to Paris's life." In a Huffington Post interview in 2019, Lees acknowledged things were easier for her in later life. "I'm probably one of the most privileged trans women in Britain. If you're a LGBTQ kid in a council estate in Manchester and you're getting bullied every time you leave the house, you feel like it's not safe to go to school, and you're seeing all of this horrible stuff in the press ? how is that going to make you feel?"

BBC/Hera/Enda Bowe The self-titled Fallen Divas become like a second family to Byron (Ellis Howard, centre)

Ellis Howard concurs, and says of the book: "I feel like it's a real cry from the council estate. "So you come out swinging as an actor because of how authentic the book is in terms of Paris's experience." Byron lives a very split existence, navigating a difficult home life with a macho father alongside a dangerous, illegal lifestyle on the outside. Things get more challenging when, as an older teenager, Byron begins to transition. There is one stalwart ally in the family though, Byron's beloved granny played by Hannah Walters, who co-produced hit show Adolescence alongside husband Stephen Graham. "We spoke a lot about code switching," Howard tells me. Code switching is the act of changing one's behaviour to fit in in certain environments. "I think it really highlights the pockets of Byron's life, where Byron is allowed to be who they are and where they aren't, or where they feel comfortable and safe enough to be," Howard says. "You can't do that if you just see all of the the glam and the chaos... we all have to come home, and what does that look like, and how does that feel? And I think it's incredibly pertinent for when someone is trying to figure out who they are. "When you taste authenticity, or when you collide into yourself - once you feel like that, you don't want to ever let it go." He adds that he has experienced this himself. "I feel like that as a queer person. Once you've felt liberation, one never wants to walk backwards, and so to be forced to is such an awful and really draining experience, but I think one that is really important to show on television, because it then begs the question of why our society forces people to do that."

BBC/Hera/Enda Bowe Much of the earlier action takes place in the nightclubs of Nottingham in the early noughties