REBECCA ROOT

REBECCA ROOT AND HARRY HEPPLE TALK ABOUT BOY MEETS GIRL, THE GROUNDBREAKING NEW BBC SITCOM FEATURING A LEAD TRANS CHARACTER

Words: Cliff Joannou

TELEVISION TRANS MISSION

“It’s like being in prison all your life and not knowing your release date.”

I’m someone who has spent the majority of my adult life surrounded by LGBT people of a wide range of backgrounds. Through the gay scene and community I’ve met and befriended a number of inspirational trans people. Yet that opening sentence is the first time I’ve heard such a stark description of the very real challenge of what it feels like for a person who was born in the wrong body. The simple analogy makes the trans experience suddenly relatable, yet still unfathomably painful. And it came from a sitcom. A new British sitcom to be exact, called Boy Meets Girl that comes to BBC2 this September.

The words are spoken with emotive honesty by Judy, played by real life trans actor Rebecca Root, on her first date with Leo (Harry Hepple). “It’s one description, and I think it works well for Judy,” Rebecca tells me as we chat via Skype. She’s in New York observing rehearsals for a new documentary theatre piece that she will feature in at the Edinburgh Fringe called Tran Scripts, which focuses on the transgender experience.

“It’s not just being born in prison, but also being in solitary confinement,” adds Rebecca. “At least in prison there’s some sort of community, but in solitary confinement it’s a bit more limiting and even more isolating. I certainly felt very isolated growing up because in the 70s there were only glimpses and rumours of [trans] people you could associate with, you didn’t actually know anybody. It was difficult if you had something inside that you couldn’t express.

“That’s why that line really resonates, because it reminded me where I’ve come from. And that’s [Boy Meets Girl writer] Elliott’s great gift, that he’s able to encapsulate a moment like that and be truthful. That’s why I think the script is so good.” As a young boy, Rebecca says there was a certain amount of clothes and toy borrowing with her older sister that was discouraged by her parents in the way that in the 70s boys didn’t play with dolls. “I learned to conceal a lot of stuff,” she says. “You got the message that certain behavioural traits are not ‘boys’ and you suppress that. My biggest bid for freedom was when I came to London at the age of 18. All of a sudden you’re at college, you’re a ‘grown up’, and you can get away with a lot more than you can in a village in the Cotswolds. That was a great sense of liberation.”