104 - Iz Hesketh: Doctor Who Fanatics, Queer Identity & Tiptoe

She's an actor, musical theatre veteran and lifelong Doctor Who devotee... Iz Hesketh joins Tia Kofi on this episode of The Final FronTia!

Best known to soap fans for her appearance in Hollyoaks, Iz is about to reach a whole new audience in Tiptoe, an upcoming Channel 4 thriller written by Russell T Davies — the man responsible for reviving Doctor Who, It's a Sin and Queer as Folk, and Iz's all-time favourite writer!

With a CV that spans the original UK cast of Book of Mormon, Legally Blonde the Musical and a lockdown drag competition that Tia herself organised, she is one of the most exciting rising British actors.

On this episode of The Final FronTia, Tia and Iz swap stories from the world of musical theatre — the secrets hidden inside Book of Mormon's famous waistcoat and Iz's dream of playing Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. They also get into what it's really like to work with Russell T Davies: the daily texts of encouragement on set, the ease of acting his writing, and the deeply emotional message Iz typed out in the back of a Manchester taxi on her final day of filming.

There's also a wonderfully frank conversation about identity and reclamation — where the line sits on slurs, what it means to work your way through the entire alphabet of queer identity and eventually land on simply "queer," and why Iz has been the L, the G, the B, the T and several letters in between.

Along the way, the conversation takes in Pokémon card collecting, the K-pop girl group discourse Tia and Iz refuse to let die and a Russell T Davies Mastermind quiz that Tia wins by answering before the question has even finished being asked.

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