Cara: My years of struggle with my sexual identity
Model to host TV series on gay and gender issues
‘Feelings that were non-conventional’
SHE’S blazed a trail of relationships with both men and women.
Now Cara Delevingne is to present a series for the BBC asking ‘Why are some of us straight and some of us not? Is there even such a thing as straight?’
The model turned actress said she was ‘excited’ to be making the BBC3 programme ‘as someone who struggled for years to understand my sexual identity’.
The 28-year-old said: ‘I can only imagine what having a series like this would have meant to the 14-year-old me who struggled to understand feelings that were seen as non-conventional or different.
‘If our series helps one young person have an easier conversation with their parents, we will have achieved one of our many goals in making this series.’
Miss Delevingne identifies as ‘pansexual’, meaning she is sexually attracted to someone regardless of their biological sex, gender, or gender identity.
She has previously been linked with singers Harry Styles and Jake Bugg. She recently split from Pretty Little Liars actress Ashley Benson after nearly two years. Miss Delevingne appears to have grown close to Cindy Crawford’s daughter, Kaia Gerber, 18, in recent months.
In July the pair were pictured with their arms around each other at a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles alongside actress Margaret Qualley. Earlier this month they showed off their matching foot tattoos which read ‘solemate’.
Her TV series, with the working title Planet Sex, will explore ‘the biggest questions in human sexuality’ and will see Miss Delevingne ‘opening herself up to experiments and demonstrations in the world’s leading sex research labs’.
Miss Delevingne, who recently starred in Amazon’s drama Carnival Row opposite Orlando Bloom, told Variety in June: ‘However one defines themselves, whether it’s “they” or “he” or “she,” I fall in love with the person – and that’s that. I’m attracted to the person.’
She also said she was ‘deeply unhappy and depressed’ in her teenage years as she struggled to come out in an ‘oldfashioned, repressed English family’.
‘I just didn’t want to admit who I was,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to upset my family.’ Her mother, Pandora, told the Daily Mail this month that she doesn’t have a clue what it is to be pansexual. ‘Nor do I want to’, she added.
Simon Andreae, the show’s executive producer, said: ‘Cara is a powerful voice within the LGBTQI+ community, who is well positioned to confront some of sex and gender’s most enduring mysteries.’