The groundbreaking and highly successful soap opera 'Neighbours' produced in Melbourne Australia for the last 34 years, will introduce its first trans character in September. What's more, the character is played by 19 year old trans actress and activist Georgie Stone. Stone pitched the character to the show's producers and worked with the writers on her guest appearance as a trans schoolgirl.
Taking into account the show's popularity (it is shown in around sixty countries) this will be great news for the LGBTIQ community. Yes, there have been trans characters on television before but they always seem to be played by cisgender actors. Australian television has a long history of 'pushing the boundaries' with the first appearance of gay couples, gay weddings, gay and lesbian kisses etc This is another milestone in including the diversity of our modern society and the producers are to be congratulated. To learn more about Georgie Stone who first announced that she was a girl at the age of two, and with the full support of her family had to go to the Family Court at age 10 to be allowed to take hormone blockers (something which thanks to her is no longer necessary after the law was changed). Check her out on-line. She's a very determined young lady.
Comments
Neighbours
To put that in perspective, they did an incest story line back in 1991 or 1992.
ROFL
The groundbreaking and once highly successful soap opera 'Neighbours'.
Kylie Minogue and Jason Donavan were once in the cast. My... how tome flies eh.
Since it left prime time BBC who exactly watches it anymore? Oh yes, us retired folk I suppose but like Summer Bay, most of the cast seem to be Love Island rejects (uk joke).
Ok, I'll put my hand up and admit that I watched it and 'Home and Away' ten years ago when I was recovering from Leukaemia. My excuse was that the cancer and chemo addled my brain and 20 minutes was about as much I could concentrate for.
Seriously, it is nice to see them cover TG issues but how long ago did Corrie (Coronation Street, a UK Soap that has been running since 1959 or thereabouts) cover it eh?
Maybe Aussie TV is 20 years behind the rest of the world as my cousin who lives in Freemantle keeps on saying.
Samantha
Nicole Maines
Nicole Maines has been playing Nia Nal on Supergirl since last autumn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Maines
Home and Away Had a trans...
…or cross dresser on the show twenty plus years ago.
An attractive man (a doctor I think)in his mid-twenty’s moved to Summer Bay.
The scene I remember had the school teacher with female friends in the bar one lunchtime (during the school hols or the week-end I guess). They noticed an attractive woman sitting alone at the bar who they do not know. Later at home, she is telling to her husband about the new good looking woman in town.
Ether then or a little later she realises who she reminded her of. The new man in town. She discreetly speaks to him and finds out it was him in the bar. She was kind, but pointed out that in a small place like Summer Bay, he/she will sooner or later be discovered. Shortly after that he decides to head back to the city.
I just remember that the character was not treated like a joke, but a normal person. The male actor was not made up to look like a man in drag, but a genuinely attractive woman.
Totally unlike when years later a Northern UK soap added a transwoman character to the cast. They gave the part to a SMALL woman who clearly was born a woman to play the part. The clear intention in my view was that their audience should forget soon as possible that the character was trans.
Sophie
Trans Actresses
I just watched an Australian made for TV movie about Carlotta and was surprised to find out she was the very first Trans actress in the world to play a Trans person on a TV show and that was in the soap opera Number 96 in 1973 as Robyn Ross, (credited as "Carolle Lea") (but strangely she was played by a cis gendered woman in the movie).