TV and stage star Shobna Gulati has revealed that they now identify as non-binary.
Speaking to Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast Shobna, 58, explained: “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.”
The star, who now lists their preferred pronouns as ‘she/they’ on social media, continued: “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.
“All the way through my life I’ve never had the words for that and I’ve never managed to explain that and 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.”
“I would go for a person absolutely, regardless of their gender.”
The Coronation Street and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie star explained that it was during a conversation with a non-binary sound engineer on a job that they realised how they identified.
“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 is now in a relationship, telling Kaye Adams: “I think I’ve loved this person all my life.”
Elaborating on whether they would be open to dating all genders, the star added: “That is also something I’m looking at – what that means to me. So yes, I would go for a person absolutely, regardless of their gender.”
