Shobna Gulati has come out as non-binary.
The beloved talent – who uses she/they pronouns – opened up about their gender journey during a recent episode of the How To Be 60 podcast.
“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,” they explained to former Loose Women co-host Kaye Adams.
“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.”
They went on to reflect on the moment that they realised they were non-binary, revealing that a sound engineer informed them of the term.
“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,” Gulati said.
“They said that they saw themselves as a person and that gender – the he or the she – wasn’t important to who they are. And I thought, ‘That’s all I’ve ever thought.'”
While Gulati recently put a label on their gender identity, their fluidity has always been accepted by their family.
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“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 continued.
“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 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.”
Gulati rose to fame as Sunita Parekh in the long-running British soap Coronation Street (2001-2006, 2009-2013).
They later appeared in an array of high-profile TV series, films and West End productions such as Doctors (2016), the limited series Paranoid (2016), River City (2017), Doctor Who (2017-2018), Hullraisers (2022), Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2018), and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (2022)
In addition to their extensive acting career, Gulati has made waves in the morning talk show sphere as a regular panellist on Loose Women.
We love to see Gulati living her truth.
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