‘Happy in myself’ – Coronation Street’s Shobna Gulati says they are non-binary

Former Coronation Street star Shobna Gulati has said they are non-binary, meaning they do not identify as male or female, explaining they had previously “never had a word for it”.

The 58-year-old, who played Sunita Alahan on the ITV soap between 2001 and 2013, explained on the How To Be 60 With Kaye Adams podcast that they had been introduced to the term by a young person they were working with and realised it was their identity.

Speaking on the podcast they said: “(I’ve) become more happy in myself, describing myself as a person.

“What do people call it now? Non-binary, so I suppose that’s who I am, and I’ve never had a word for it, but I’ve learned 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.

“I didn’t have the words for that all the way through my life. I’ve never had the words for that, and I’ve never managed to sort of explain that.

“And I suppose my family, my immediate family, have not really thought about it.

“They’ve just sort of (thought) Shobna’s either extremely feminine or extremely masculine, because I was just accepted as the person who fell out of the tree, and equally, the person who put on all this makeup and did a dance.”

Former Loose Women presenter Adams then asked Gulati how they “came to that realisation”.

They replied: “I was just doing a show, and then the sound person, they said to me that they were non-binary, and I said, ‘oh, 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 who have been 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 went on to say they had been told “you can’t go out like that” by their parents when they had not washed their hair, and the actor said they responded by saying: “Well, why not? Why can’t I go out like that?”

They added: “It was just sort of fake comments along the way, or I walk like a boy, lots of people tell me I walk like a boy, and I do, like there’s no doubt about it, I just don’t know quite where it all comes from.

“It’s just who I am, and I’m happy in that now, how to be 60? Be all rolled into one, have your masculine and feminine all rolled into one, and just be your person you are.”

Gulati has also appeared in British sitcom dinnerladies as Anita, a number of episodes of Doctor Who as Najia Khan between 2018 and 2020, and six episodes of BBC soap EastEnders as Ameena.