Ellis Howard Interview

Liverpool-born actor Ellis Howard takes on the lead role in the BBC’s wild, anarchic coming-of-age drama What It Feels Like for a Girl, inspired by the critically acclaimed memoir of the same name by writer and journalist Paris Lees.

As the series hits our screens, Ellis opens up about his portrayal of Byron, class, queerness, the power of community, and why humanising the trans experience matters now more than ever

Words | Lawrence Saunders

Whereabouts in Liverpool did you grow up?

It’s controversial! I would say Norris Green, some of my family would say Walton, and my nan would say Fazakerley! It was kind of on the border of all three of them but I say Norris Green.

Can you tell us how your journey into acting first began?

I had so much energy as a kid – I was precocious and gobby, and my mum was like, ‘What do I do with him?!’ So she put me in an acting class in West Derby. I tried to get into this really fancy place called the Black Box – I actually got accepted but I’ll never forget it: on the car ride home, my mum pulled over and said, ‘Ellis, we can’t afford to send you there’.
After that, I stopped acting for a couple of years. But when I was 13 or 14, an amazing opportunity came along at Rare Studio. They offered free training for kids from low-income families, and it completely changed my life.

The teachers at Rare take you incredibly seriously. Even when I was a bald 13-year-old, Lindsay Inglesby (the founder and principal of Rare) spoke to me like I was an artist. She taught me that if I had grit and worked incredibly hard, I could achieve something real – do it properly and be paid for it. Industry professionals came in to speak to us, like Dan Hubbard, a major casting director who recently cast Midas Man. We were given access to the industry incredibly early. And so I thought, ‘God, I can do this and have a career’.

You attended the prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where alumni include the likes of Daniel Craig, Jodie Whittaker and Damian Lewis. What was that experience like?

Guildhall rarely accepts students into its drama school at 18, but Rare really built me up and got me ready for it. It was my dream school, so getting in felt incredible. Drama school can be a tough, even brutal, environment – and if you dig around Sky News, you’ll come across some stories about Guildhall.

Interestingly, I’m now writing and developing a television show with my best friend, Taheeb, based on our time there. We were both outsiders entering this huge, elite institution. When we joined, the school was beginning to change, moving away from the idea of escaping yourself and focusing more on authenticity – on who you are. But I had the time of my life there. I met my best mates, and it really set me up to become an actor.

How did you first hear about the TV adaption of What It Feels Like for a Girl, where you were already aware of Paris Lee’s book?

Yes, I’d read the book before I met with the team behind the TV adaptation – initially about coming on as a writer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take the job because I was doing To Kill a Mockingbird in the West End – and I was gutted, because I absolutely loved the book! I thought it was incredible: unflinching and unrestrained. I couldn’t believe the BBC was making it into a series. It felt so daring, like This Is England – capturing the dirt under the fingernails of a working-class experience.

When I read the first script, I thought, ‘Wow, this is just as traumatic and triumphant as the book’. I really wanted to be involved. These kinds of jobs come around once in a blue moon.
I didn’t audition straight away – they were casting for something like nine months, so it took a while before they got to me. Paris (the writer) saw a photo of me on Instagram and said she thought I looked “cheeky”, so she asked if I’d come in to talk and see if I was interested. I did, and then I went through four or five rounds of auditions. When I finally got the role, I went from thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m the most grateful kid in the world’, to the realisation of, ‘Oh s**t… I’ve got to do this’.

How did you prepare for the lead role of Byron? Did you work closely with Paris Lees during that process?

Paris was really at the centre of it. The series is inspired by the book and by true events, and I think what made this experience so special was that, unlike many memoir or biopic projects – where the person at the heart of the story has often passed – we had Paris right there with us. That was incredibly liberating. For some of the scenes, she could tell me, ‘What I was feeling here was a really deep sense of shame’, and I’d think, ‘Okay, great’, and let that inform how I approached it. It really felt like a collaboration.

But there was also a point during the second week of filming when Paris said, ‘You’ve got this now – just go, enjoy yourself, take risks’. That trust meant so much. Yes, the story is inspired by Paris’s life and the book, but it’s also a drama – there’s an element of creativity. Having Paris there was amazing because she’s such an incredible creative force, and she allowed me to fly, to bring my own mess and confusion, my own relationship with queerness and poverty, into the role. It wasn’t just about delivering an homage. I think we were both trying to dig somewhere deeper, together. That said, I believe that if you’re a fan of the book, you’ll be a fan of the show. Of course, some of the characters have been combined for TV, but overall, it’s a very honest and accurate adaptation.

Where do we find Byron at the beginning of the series?

Byron is at school, without much of a support system, bouncing between their mum’s, dad’s and Mammar Joe’s homes with a desperate internal desire to escape. It’s the story of someone who has grown up in a small town with people who aren’t like them, dreaming of a life bigger and bolder.

 

It’s not often that a major series on a mainstream channel tackles a story like this – and it’s landing on our screens just weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the 2010 Equality Act refer to ‘a biological woman and biological sex’. Did that ruling add any pressure on you and the rest of the cast?

I felt the pressure that every actor feels – just that sense of, ‘I want to do this well, I want to get this, quote unquote, right’. Look, who knew we were going to make this show when the Supreme Court had just made its decision? We had no idea. I guess what we all felt while filming was that we were incredibly lucky to be part of something that was telling a working-class queer story, with the kind of size and scale that’s often reserved for middle class stories. It’s got such a hyper-realistic visual aesthetic. We got to tell a really cool story – and it also looks really cool! So, I felt a sense of gratitude, and a desire to get it right.

In terms of pressure, I feel like Paris chose me [for the role], and my main goal was to honour her – to honour her experience. I feel incredibly lucky that she wanted me to do it. There are so many points where our lives and experiences touch. We didn’t set out to tell the story of all trans people in this country – there’s no monolith, every experience is completely different. What I hope this show does, if anything, is humanise a trans experience – Paris’s experience. I hope people get behind it so that television commissioners, the BBC, and beyond, will take more punts on more working-class queer stories. Especially at this time, when things are so dark politically, I hope our show does a great job of humanising the trans experience and sharing the value and importance of community.

This is absolutely a show about Paris’s experience, but it’s also a show about class; it’s about coming of age. It’s like a fairy tale dipped in poverty. It’s also an incredible postcard to Y2K – its music and fashion. Absolutely, it’s a show for the queer community, but I think, I hope, and I believe it can extend much further than that. I think it’s important that queer art gets the same mainstream visibility, regardless of the political temperature. It’s important to make things for the community and to believe in that, but it’s also important for art to engage people and start conversations.

Paris has spoken about the chemistry between you and the rest of the main cast. What was it like working with them on set? Did that connection continue off camera?

Yeah! I’d already been cast, and they were looking to find who the other Fallen Divas (Byron’s eclectic gang of friends) would be. Hannah Jones, a scouser who plays Sasha, turned up to a chemistry read in these eight-inch heels – she just oozed confidence. She screamed at me, ‘Oh, I know you! I’ve seen you before! I’ve seen you on Bold Street!’. And I was like, ‘Oh my god’ [laughs].

Maybe it’s a scouse thing, maybe it’s a class thing, maybe it’s a queer thing, but there’s just no filter! We got stuck into it straight away. I think, also, because all of us felt so incredibly lucky to be doing this and telling this story, we all really showed up trying to be as vulnerable as possible and give our best selves. I think because of that, it hardwired connections between us. We all took care of each other incredibly well, and we all really fell in love with each other.

Honestly, I felt like I had a bit of a queer renaissance during it. There have always been two sides to me – this working-class, scrappy kid from Norris Green, and then this really sensitive queer kid who reads Rachel Cusk and Maggie Nelson. And I was like, ‘How do these two parts of me reconcile?’ I don’t know. I think this show really just blew open the doors, allowing our class and queerness to be shown in all their complexity. These are characters who can f**k up and be forgiven, who can be unlikable, and who have all the same arc, nuance and subtlety that our middle class and heterosexual counterparts have.

We all just absolutely loved it. Even when we weren’t filming, we were hanging out. That whole summer filming – it was like a fever dream.

What do you hope viewers take away from the series?

It’s about resilience. It’s about finding colour and comedy in these incredibly dark times. I hope the show offers a bit of relief right now. I also hope it engages people, opens their hearts and minds, and helps humanise a very specific lived experience – which is Paris’s.

Can you tell us a bit about your non-profit initiative, Step Up For Scousers – what inspired you to start it, and what’s it all about?

I knew someone who worked in the toy industry, and they were destroying all these faulty toys. I was like, ‘Oh, what are you doing? You can’t do that! I know so many kids in my community who won’t get Christmas presents this year – give them all to me!’ Anyway, they came to my house – a tiny two-up, two-down in Norris Green – with this truckload of toys. And I was like, ‘S**t, what are we going to do?!’ So we started doing anonymous drop-offs for people around Christmas. Obviously, there are people who unfortunately feel a lot of shame asking for help, but we don’t ask any questions. We drop off where you want us to drop off.

I put a video on social media saying, ‘Look, I’ve got all these toys – who wants them?’ The response was incredible – not just from people needing the toys, but also from people wanting to volunteer and help out. That’s when I thought, ‘I’ve got to keep doing this’. We’re like the Golden Girls – it’s me, my mum, my nan and my Auntie Corinne. Mostly, we focus on Christmas now, because storage is an issue (the house just isn’t big enough!). We raise enough money to buy everything from tampons, baby formula, shampoo, and long-life milk to footballs and Barbie dolls. We work with Ian Byrne, the MP for West Derby, and his Fans Supporting Foodbanks network to distribute everything.

We’ve been doing it for about five years now. It’s still a relatively small operation because we just don’t have the space. But we love it, and we’re really close to so many families now. I had a lot growing up – I had access to free arts training – and to circle back to Lindsay and Rare, I wouldn’t have a career without someone putting the ladder down for me, given my economic situation.

I hope what Step Up For Scousers does is show a bunch of families that we care – that we’re all in this together.

What It Feels Like for a Girl is on BBC iPlayer now

Images: BBC/Hera/Enda Bow