TBF I don’t think there were any trans actors about in 1997? The handful of MtF transsexuals in the news were people like April Ashley, Fay Presto & Jan Morris.
Hesmondhaigh has said in interviews that Hayley was originally intended to be a figure of fun- a cheap joke at Roy’s expense (ie the only woman Roy could attract would be a pretend one - which is genuinely quite a horrible storyline) and it was Julie who wanted to make Hayley a fully-rounded character and engaged with PFC to better achieve that.
In hindsight it’s undeniable that having a female actress in the role worked well for the transactivists - it got their messaging out in front of the public in a very sympathetic way because of course trans MtF character Hayley Cropper convincingly ‘passed’ as a woman because the actor playing the character WAS AN ACTUAL WOMAN.
It meant they could shoehorn in all the political messaging without the public going ‘That Hayley person is a bit manly! She’s got a skull bigger than Roy’s!’
Having a woman play the role kept the cognitive dissonance caused by the concept of a ‘male woman’ to the absolute minimum.
Here’s the Annie Wallace video (I have a local copy saved now)
In the video Wallace explains the whole Corrie phenomena, how Hayley was so well liked that the public were writing to the government so ‘she’, Hayley, could get the legal right to marry ‘her’ Roy.
Wallace even verbally slips up up at one point in this interview, saying the Hayley character was a ‘big tool’ and then immediately self corrects to ‘big story’.
I’ll try and come back with the timestamps shortly but gotta cook dinner first.
The oddest part is at 44:00 where Wallace is in full flow re: Mermaids and Susie Green and children’s bodies and Gillick competence and the whole video suddenly cuts to an equivalent of the old TV test card, then comes back to a much more subdued Wallace saying ‘I’m just a soap actress’.
Wallace behaves very curiously throughout, randomly flipping back and forth from being a quite forceful character who speaks about politics and rights to a much sweeter, softer one, who says stuff like (paraphrasing) ‘I don’t anything controversial, I’m just a little wee thing, me, blending in and working at PC world and driving a little white car’
But it’s clear from the anecdotes told that Wallace has known loads of the major UK transactivists since the late 80s in MCR, so we’re talking Beaumont Society/Northern Concord era, when the seeds of all we’re dealing with now were sown
At one point, mid rant about media ‘disinformation’ Wallace is merrily mixing up Allison Bailey and Maya Forstater.
On first watch I thought it was an accident, but now I’m wondering if the telling of Allison’s story without Allison’s name attached is because Wallace doesn’t want anyone looking up Allison and discovering she is a black, working class, lesbian.
The bit that (and IANAL) comes closest to defamation is actually about LGB Alliance, who Wallace characterises as thinking that ‘trans people are icky’
Towards the end Wallace talks about how playing the Sally St Claire Hollyoaks character gives Wallace the chance to do some ‘Hayley Cropper magic’.
Here’s some of those magical storylines (I don’t watch Hollyoaks btw, so this is just from Google)
Sally the headteacher is subjected to a transphobic graffiti hate crime at the school
Sally is subjected to ‘radical misogyny’
Sally has secretly been looking out for the son Sally fathered pre-transition
Sally has to conceal a crime because Sally has no GRC and would have to go to a male prison
Sally goes to prison for a completely different incident (Sally was covering up for someone else and isn’t really an evil murderer at all, but a protective mother-martyr type 🙄)
Sally gets sent to the female estate where poor, vulnerable Sally is ‘hate crimed’ and hospitalised by biologically female prisoners.
‘Hayley Cropper Magic’ is very magical indeed.
Old MN thread from when the prison hate crime episode aired:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4291061-hollyoaks