‘ITV putting a trans person on primetime signals that we’re not going anywhere’

It’s a strange time for Jordan Gray right now. On the one hand, she’s got a brilliant new sitcom coming out on ITV – several years in the making – and is heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a long-anticipated follow-up to her Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated 2022 show, Is it a Bird? On the other, well, as anyone with a sense of humanity will know, it’s a scary time to be trans.

First, the good news: Transaction, her TV show, is brilliant. Written by and starring Jordan, it’s a six-part sitcom set in a supermarket night shift. She plays Liv, an affirmative action transgender hire who turns out to be a nightmare, but they can’t get rid of her because, as the comedian puts it: ‘What could be worse than firing a transgender person?’

To say Liv is a nightmare is an understatement. She can be spiky, manipulative, punishing and lazy; it’s refreshing to see a trans character not being presented as ‘a suffering saint or a sexualised villain’, as Jordan puts it.

Liv does have an arc, though. ‘She’s a lone wolf character but really just wants to have a family, and then she finds this little weird dysfunctional family,’ says Jordan.

As in many of the best sitcoms, the cast is made up of characters thrown together from different walks of life (including Nick Frost as the relatable manager who’s well-meaning and tries his best to be an ally but doesn’t always get it right). And it’s no accident that it has, in places, some of the spirit of Community (the surreal NBC sitcom set in a community college) and Tina Fey’s 30 Rock.

‘Those are my two favourite shows of all time,’ says Jordan. ‘So it has to hold up to that standard of joke frequency and ideally joke quality.’ All those years of doing live comedy have taught her that making people laugh is absolutely the priority, and whatever agenda there is in there has to come second.

As with Community, Transaction has some episodes that dash off in unexpected directions: there’s film noir, sci-fi and, as you would hope from someone who does musical comedy with as much panache as Jordan does, there’s one with a lot of music in it.

Essex-born Jordan first shot to fame after reaching the finals in The Voice in 2016, gaining a new layer of credibility and acclaim with her hit live comedy show, Is It a Bird? This, in turn, led to a memorable appearance on Channel 4’s Friday Night Live, in which she stripped naked at the end of a song.

The response (from the grimmer sections of the internet) inspired the title of her new live comedy show, Is That a C*ck in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Here to Kill Me? She got a barrage of death threats, and she’ll go into some detail about how that felt.

‘This next show could have been very just cathartic and vitriolic and angry,’ says Jordan. ‘But it’s me holding open a wound for an hour at a time. The poster and the artwork look like it’s very aggressive – I’m holding two guns – but it’s coming from the other side.’

Then, in April, the UK Supreme Court ruled that you had to be biologically female to be legally recognised as a woman. A lot of women like Jordan, particularly those who are experiencing any sort of health concerns, are terrified they’ll be put in the wrong hospital ward, or might end up falling through the cracks of a broken system.

She does her best to be diplomatic and understanding towards those who consider the ruling a victory, and says it’s interesting that elements of Transaction feel as if they were written a few weeks ago.

‘When it feels like our lives are being made functionally unlivable, suddenly ITV’s putting a transgender person right on the screen at that prime time, and that’s really cool. It’s a lovely signal for transgender people that we’re not going anywhere. In fact, we’ve got to bop and weave and survive this next bit,’ she says.

‘When society has given you the signals that it’s maybe time to throw in the towel because it’s just going to get harder and harder, there’s always dark thoughts in the background. And we’re trying to be civil and trying to be happy all the time, trying to put on a brave face on it. I’m proud of myself and the work I’ve done, and everything is still underpinned with joy.’

Transaction is on ITVX and ITV2 from Jun 24. Jordan Gray: Is That a C*ck in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Here to Kill Me? Assembly George Square Gardens, Edinburgh, Jul 30-Aug 24, jordangraycomedy.com

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