Attitude Awards 2025: What It Feels Like for a Girl stars on ‘overwhelming response’ to LGBTQ TV show of the year (EXCLUSIVE)
In this exclusive interview, we chat to the cast of the best LGBTQ show of the year, as Paris Lees' BBC series wins the 2025 TV award winner, at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar
“This show is going to bring a sense of community and light a kid,” Hannah Jones tearfully told Attitude earlier this year when discussing What It Feels Like for a Girl, the TV series in which she plays Sasha. She then reflected on the show’s theme of found family: “Even if you’re in that awful place — Hucknall, for example [where the show is set] — with parents who don’t understand you, people around you at school who just don’t get you, there is refuge. There is family in your not-blood family.”
The electric eight-parter lit up TV screens back in June, becoming the most powerful and unapologetic trans representation we’d seen in years, which is why it is receiving the Television Award at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar. Based on the memoir of the same name by media figure and former Attitude columnist Paris Lees, it tells the story of Byron, an irrepressible teenager from Nottinghamshire whose journey towards accepting their queerness is one of the most gloriously chaotic ever seen on screen.
“We meet Byron at 15,” Ellis Howard, the rising star, who plays Byron, told us. “Sick of Mum and Dad, sick of being beaten the shit out of [at school], knows who they are but doesn’t h ave language for it yet, until they meet ‘The Divas’. What happens is, they go on this odyssey that is immoral, illegal, but always loud, fun, hedonistic and anarchic, into finding themselves. Often, in finding yourself, you lose yourself as well.”
Sasha is “a Scouse Mean Girls’ Regina George”, according to Jones, and both frenemy and foil to Byron; Laquarn Lewis plays the third member of ‘The Divas’, Lady Die; and Jake Dunn plays Liam, a terrifying emblem of toxic masculinity, and the subject of both Byron and Sasha’s desire.
“Liam is someone who meets Byron in particularly disturbing circumstances, from a very charged, intense, magnetised experience with each other, which changes both of their lives forever,” said Dunn.
Lewis adds of Lady Die: “We find her in episode one, introducing Byron to her chaotic, promiscuous, hilariously mental group. Die is one of those people who is so loving, supportive, but wants to have a hecktonne of fun.”
“People [are] flooding my inboxes, chatting to me in the street” – Ellis Howard
Reflecting on the show’s impact more recently, Howard told us: “I’m completely blown away by the response the show has got, and the audience it’s captured, which is obviously incredibly queer. It’s stimulated such conversation, from everyone talking about class, and the intersection of class and queerness, but also 2000s rave culture. What it all does, at its most difficult, is generate very difficult, but very necessary conversations. I’m overwhelmed. People flooding my inboxes, chatting to me in the street about their experiences around queerness, their kids, their extended families.
“What it feels like the show has done is humanise a very specific trans experience. The outpouring of love for the show… People want to show up in a really beautiful way, even though it’s a dark and perilous political moment. The reception to the show — it shows people want to be really gorgeous and kind.”
This is an excerpt from a feature appearing in the 2025 Attitude Awards issue. To see the full feature, order your copy of the Attitude Awards 2025 issue now or read it alongside 15 years of back issues on the free Attitude app.