Trans tales

In new drama Butterfly Anna Friel challenges the myths surrounding transgender children, as the mother of Max who becomes Maxine. A first for primetime TV, its star hopes it will educate and entertain,

Anna Friel tells Janet Christie about educating herself on ground-breaking drama Butterfly

Akaleidoscope. In an antique shop in York, Anna Friel chanced on one and had to have it. Ever since they were invented by David Brewer in 1817 people have been fascinated by lifting them to the light and watching the scraps of colour turn into endless patterns.

Brewer, a serious and slightly irascible (according to his daughter) Scottish scientist, was more interested in lighthouse optics, binocular cameras and the like and would probably be bemused that this invention was his most enduring. Yet he gave it the name, kaleidoscope, from the Ancient Greek, kalos (beautiful), eidos (form) and skopeō (to look at), so he would understand the attraction.

“It’s transitional, ever changing, beautiful,” says Friel, who suggested using kaleidoscope patterns to signal the ad breaks on her new ITV miniseries Butterfly. Written by Bafta winner Tony Marchant, it’s an exploration of how an ordinary family behaves when one of the children is transgender. Transitioning and evolving, the kaleidoscope visuals are the perfect metaphor for a timely exploration of transgender issues, the first in a drama on British primetime TV.

“The kaleidoscope is symbolic, colourful…” says Friel, then throws in a dose of down to earth practicality with, “and also a good way to break up the parts of the show.”

Multi-faceted is a term you might use of Friel herself, a shape shifter with a subtlety of approach that can capture the multi-dimensional complexities of a character or theme, whether it’s the complicated cop Marcella with her blackouts and mental health issues, US military maverick Odelle in Odyssey, or Vicky in Butterfly, a mother prepared to do anything to make her child happy. Butterfly director Anthony Byrne (Peaky Blinders and In Darkness) recognises this quality in Friel, describing the international, Emmy award-winning actor as “very instinctive” and “a maverick who is always searching for the truth of any moment.” He could also have added her long-standing attraction to roles that reflect the shifting patterns of the way we live now, our preoccupations and dilemmas, ever since she did the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss on TV in Brookside, as a teenager back in 1994. So how does the average family behave when they have a child who wants to transition? It was Friel’s acknowledgment that she didn’t know how she would react if it were her child Gracie, now 13, that made her want to do Butterfly.

“I certainly know a lot more about it now than when I went in,” she says.

Aiming to smash myths around gender transitioning – that it’s easily accessible, a choice, a phase, or

that parents are forcing their child

– Butterfly wants to normalise the experience of trans kids and their families, to inform us about gender dysphoria, and do it from the child’s point of view. Marchant is a writer drawn to the exploration of issues

such as ADHD (Kid in the Corner), adoption (Bad Blood) and fertility (The Family Man) through the prism of a modern family. Produced by Nicola Shindler (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax), as well as Friel, the cast includes Emmett J Scanlan as her estranged husband, Alison Steadman, Sean Mcginley and child actors Callum Booth-ford and Millie Gibson. Over three episodes we follow the family as Max expresses a desire to become Maxine and his parents are conflicted over how best to support their child.

If all this sounds worthy, it isn’t. Butterfly has a light touch and humour, not least provided by Alison Steadman as a sharp-tongued ‘Nan’ happy to blame her daughter for the way her grandchild is “turning out”, in contrast to grandad Sean Mcginley, and there are great performances from young actors Callum Booth-ford as Max/maxine and Millie Gibson as his older sister Lily.

“What did you think?” asks Friel, still chirpy in the middle of a day-long junket promoting the new series she co-produced. I tell her I thought it was compulsive viewing.