DIVA catches up with this breakout star about Channel 4’s latest vital show
BY KATE CANNING, IMAGE BY DAVID REISS
Shakeel Kimotho has been a force in the theatre industry for many years, with stellar roles in La Cage Aux Folles, CATS and Animal Farm. Most recently, Shakeel burst onto our screens with a TV debut for the ages as Hanna in Russell T Davies’ brand new Channel 4 show, Tip Toe.
Tip Toe tells the story of how a simple feud between neighbours in a suburb in Manchester gradually escalates into a harrowing situation with fatal consequences. It follows neighbours Leo (Alan Cumming) and Clive (David Morrissey) as their lives begin to unravel due to radicalisation and extremism. Shakeel plays Hanna, a charismatic bartender at Spit and Polish, the Canal Street gay bar at the centre of the story.
We meet Hanna at a part of their story where they are exploring their gender identity and beginning to use they/them pronouns, as well as a name their girlfriend chose for them. Shakeel describes Hanna as someone who is a “great example of someone who is becoming. Someone who is in transition and isn’t fully formed. They show that this is okay for every single queer person.” It is very clear that portraying Hanna isn’t a responsibility that Shakeel takes lightly, as she details her process of creating the character. “I really just went back to my friends who are queer as well to talk about what sapphic transness looks like in this context.”
Tip Toe provides pivotal representation for many communities with intersecting and underrepresented identities, something Shakeel connected with based on her own background as a mixed-heritage trans woman from Northern, working-class origins. She reflected on the importance of this, telling me: “It was such an honour and a privilege, and we didn’t take it for granted how much we were representing working-class queer Northern souls and hearts.”
Something Tip Toe also represents incredibly well is the ride-or-die nature of queer friendship, with the first episode seeing the Spit and Polish employees help Zee (Iz Hesketh) confront an abusive home environment without question. For Shakeel, this is also something that resonates with her real life. “Queer friendship reigns more than anything else. Queer friendship is how I’m able to be here doing what I’m doing, aside from being an artist, just as a human being. But especially as an artist. My fellow queer creatives, Black queer creatives especially, have been able to fill my cup up in ways that I am just completely indebted to.”
Shakeel, making her TV debut in Tip Toe, feels like a full-circle moment for her, as she points out that Russell T Davies’ Queer As Folk planted the seed for her to become a performer and was also something of a queer awakening for her.“There’s a place in my heart that Queer As Folk sits in. I think everyone has their thing; some girls have their Britney Spears videos, some boys have Justin Timberlake, Queer As Folk was that for me.”
Despite being new to the TV industry herself, Shakeel is keen to carve out a space for other trans actors too, and urges anyone with the desire to break into the industry who may not currently know where they fit to “understand the notion of becoming. The world itself is getting into its own shoes too.”
She also encourages emerging trans performers to use all of the resources at their disposal, mentioning Trans on Screen and Allen and Payne Casting’s GAP Workshops. “Lean into them because if there’s one thing that Tip Toe can teach people that maybe don’t have as much access to queer love and community, is that queer love is universal and we will always look out for each other and support one another and our culture is built on that.”
Tip Toe is a vital piece of television with a sense of urgency that is impossible to ignore in the current political climate. Shakeel points out that the show’s core message is about how the digital space, especially, is instigating a lot of hatred, calling Tip Toe a “call to arms” to squash the echo chamber culture that exists in these online spaces. She tells DIVA that the most important thing people can do is not internalise the show, and to allow it to move through them by having the nuanced conversations that the show does an incredible job of provoking.
Shakeel also tells DIVA that this summer she will “definitely be at a few Pride events” and “if you see [her], please say ‘Hello!’ because the biggest gift from this show is how many more friends we made in the queer community.”
Catch Shakeel in Channel 4’s Tip Toe, streaming now.
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