Corrie’s Shobna Gulati appears to have made a tough decision after coming out as non-binary.
The actress, who was a fan favourite as Sunita Alahan in the ITV soap from 2001 to 2013, recently revealed that they identify as non-binary. Opening up on a podcast, Shobna said that they had “never had a word for it” before.
They came to the realisation after chatting to someone else who was non-binary, which is where someone doesn’t see themselves as exclusively male or female. It seems they’ve decided to make a change to their social media in order to limit trolls or any offensive comments.
Shobna, 58, has changed their pronouns on social media to reflect her identity, and they now say “she/they”. But it seems they also had to make another change. According to the Mirror, the star limited comments on posts “after being hit with vile abuse over their decision to publicly share their true identity”.
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images for Montblanc)
Shobna had revealed her decision in a chat with Kaye Adams on the How to Be 60 podcast, saying: “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 that 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.”
They continued: “All the way through my life, I’ve never had the words for that, and I’ve never managed to sort of explain that.
(Image: ITV)
“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 make-up and did a dance.”
Shobna said they learned more about the term when chatting to a sound engineer while working on a project. “The sound person said to me that they were non-binary, and I said, ‘What is that?’” they said.
“So, then they explained, and I thought, ‘Well, I feel like that, but I didn’t ever have that vocabulary’.”
The star, also known for playing Anita in dinnerladies and Ameena in a few episodes of EastEnders, also revealed that they are in love with someone.
But they revealed that they would be open to dating either men and women in the future.
“That is also something I’m looking at – what that means to me,” Shobna said. “So yes, I would go for a person absolutely, regardless of their gender.”
For more of the latest showbiz news from Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
