EXCLUSIVE: The star of Prime Video’s latest queer drama What It Feels Like for a Girl has declared Amazon’s decision to buy the show in the U.S. “a revolutionary act, an act of protest.”
BAFTA nominee Ellis Howard pointed to a political climate in the U.S. that runs counter to the “ketamine-laced queer odyssey” featured in What It Feels Like for a Girl, which was the BBC’s first series to be created and produced by a trans person.
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Prime Video bought the series last week to launch during Pride Month and it joins other queer drama on the platform like Overcompensating and Red, White & Royal Blue.
In the same week that Prime Video revealed the news, a senator in Tennessee tweeted that “homosexuality has no place in America,” before swiftly deleting the post following backlash.
“America is the parent of the world and we, it’s children, copy, and so for our show to come here and find an audience and platform feels like a revolutionary act, an act of protest,” Howard told Deadline. “For the millions of queer people and allies of queer people in America I hope it gives them some sort of safe space, some sort of community.”
Speaking to Deadline last month, British showrunner Russell T. Davies said he doubted he would get American money for his new show Tip Toe due to its “clear condemnation of Trump.”
Produced by Hamnet maker Hera Pictures, What It Feels Like for a Girl is adapted by trans journalist and author Paris Lees from her swashbuckling memoir. It follows the teenage Byron (Howard) as they escape a former mining town and are swept into its underground club scene, discovering identity, friendship and survival among a chaotic chosen family known as the Fallen Divas.
When Howard landed the role two years ago, having broken out in BBC horror Red Rose, he said he “couldn’t believe we would even get a British audience” let alone one on the other side of the pond. “I’m playing a 15-year-old who in the first six minutes of the show is doing a dance routine as a child prostitute and I’m just thinking, ‘Is this going to see the light of day?’,” he said.
But Howard said the show is so much more than its “historic achievement.” It is a “propulsive class thriller” that can mean different things to different people, and can exist in the same space as recent success stories in America like Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Davies’ It’s a Sin in this new era of hit British exports.
“It doesn’t just exist on a gender line, it can exist on an ideological line, a political line, an ambition line,” added Howard. “It feels like a diamond in that way. The light hits it and it refracts, and it gives you what you want from it.”
“Scouse power alliance”
Howard speaks to Deadline International from an apartment in L.A. above a Dunkin’ Donuts (this is his first time in Tinseltown) where he is promoting What It Feels Like for a Girl but also working on new projects including a show about his early life in development with Netflix.
Speaking of Netflix, Howard lost out in the Best Leading Actor category at the BAFTAs (he was nommed alongside Colin Firth, Matt Smith and Taron Egerton) to Stephen Graham, the star of Adolescence, the streamer’s biggest hit of the year.
Howard and Graham are both proud Scousers, hailing from working class families in Liverpool, and Howard revealed they are now chatting about future projects with Hannah Walters, Graham’s wife, who starred in both Adolescence and What It Feels Like for a Girl. “We’re talking about how we can make this scouse power alliance happen in some way,” said Howard.
In fact, between takes during the filming of What It Feels Like for a Girl, Walters would show Howard early cuts of Adolescence. “Right before the scene where we get stoned together [in What It Feels Like for a Girl], Hannah showed me the CCTV footage of Owen [Cooper, Adolescence star],” explained Howard.
When they found out they were both nominated, Howard said Graham “FaceTimed me straight away and said, ‘I’m so proud it’s us two, two working class scousers doing this thing together’.”
“My first route into this industry was hearing Stephen Graham in This is England and saying, ‘God a voice like mine can exist on television’,” added Howard. “So to have this full circle moment where the first time I led a show, I was nominated alongside him, I just felt so proud of myself.”
Howard said there is a “gorgeous kinship” between Adolescence and What It Feels Like for a Girl.
His Netflix development is “going well” and he is also working on shows with A24 and Hera Pictures, while he can be soon be seen in Channel 4 and Universal Content Productions’ adaptation of Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident, another authored piece that O’Donoghue is also showrunning.
Howard may be experiencing the glitz and glamor of Hollywood but he won’t be forgetting his roots anytime soon and thinks back to the reaction of those closest to him when What It Feels Like for a Girl first came out. He wonders if this can be transposed to the States.
“In working class pubs in Liverpool, chatting to my dad’s mates who have never met a trans person in real life, they were like, ‘F***ing hell, this show is mad’,” he added. “They just said, ‘The way you speak to each other, the way you take the piss out of each other, feels so inherently working class’.”
What It Feels Like for a Girl is available on Prime Video now.
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