Coronation Street legend Shobna Gulati has come out as non-binary and declared that they are in love.
The 58-year-old star played Sunita Alahan on the ITV soap for 12 years, from 2001 until 2013. They have now spoken about their gender identity and declared that they have always felt this way.
During a chat with Kaye Adams on the How to Be 60 podcast, Shobna said: “I’ve become more happy describing myself as a person. What do people call it now? Non-binary. So, I suppose that’s who I am.
“I’ve never had a word for it, but I’ve learnt from our younger generation what that might look like in terms of a word, because I know what it feels like in terms of being me.”
(Image: ITV)
They continued: “All the way through my life, I’ve never had the words for that, and I’ve never managed to explain that. I suppose my immediate family have not really thought about it. They’ve just thought: ‘Shobna is either extremely feminine or extremely masculine.’
“Because I was just accepted as a person who fell out of the tree and equally the person who put on all this makeup and did a dance.”
They’ve listed their pronouns as “she/thy” on their Instagram profile. A non-binary person is someone who does not identify as exclusively male or female.
(Image: Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
They may feel that their gender is fluid and can change, or they may identify as both male and female or neither. The star has also revealed they have fallen in love but are also open to dating men and women in the future.
Shobna, who shot to fame in the nineties for her role as Anita in Dinnerladies, said they understood more about being non-binary after a chat with a sound engineer while working on a project. They explained: “The sound person said to me that they were non-binary, and I said: ‘What is that?’ So, then they explained, and I thought, ‘Well, I feel like that, but I didn’t ever have that vocabulary.’
“They said that they saw themselves as a person and that the gender – the he or the she – wasn’t important to who they are. And I thought: ‘That’s all I’ve ever thought.’
“And I think now I’m free to say it out loud. I think people around me have accepted who I am for a long time without any explanation, but I suppose when I’m asked now, I’ll say it.”
Shobna admitted they felt pressure to present as more female when they were growing up. They said: “My father would say things like: ‘Oh, you haven’t dressed up today,’ or ‘You haven’t washed your hair,’ or ‘Your hair looks limp, you can’t go out like that.’ I’d say: ‘Why not?’
“He’d make comments along the way… ‘I walk like a boy. Lots of people tell me I walk like a boy, and I do. I just don’t know quite where it all comes from; it’s just who I am, and I’m happy in that now.”
Shobna also starred on EastEnders, playing the role of Ameena Badawi. They have also appeared in quiz shows such as Have I Got News For You and The Weakest Link, and appeared as a panellist on Loose Women from 2013 until 2014.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
