Straight-talking with a lesbian icon by Syrie Johnson
I've 've
tried to resist, really I have, but my first question to Bad Girls
star, Simone Lahbib, was inevitable. "So, how does it feel being a
lesbian icon?" Lahbib puts her head in her hands. "Oh no. It's overwhelming
and very flattering, but it's great. It's slightly unreal, what with
being straight. But it seems to be breaking down some of the ignorance,
stereotyping and prejudice that gay women and men have to contend
with every day, and that can only be a good thing."
Lahbib was skeptical of the lesbian storyline...Bad Girls, the award-winning
Carlton series set in HMP Larkhall, achieved viewing figures last
year of nine million. This Tuesday's episode will pick up where last
season's cliffhanger left off - Helen Stewart, Lahbib's character,
had dumped her fiancé for lifer Nikki Wade (Mandana Jones).
Wade escaped, dressed as a nurse, and begged Stewart to abscond to
San Francisco. After the most explicit lesbian love scene ever seen
on mainstream television, Stewart must now decide whether to turn
her in, or to go on the run with her.
The show's cult following means Lahbib herself is now as big a sex
symbol as Tamzin Outhwaite. The difference, obviously, is that most
of the fans checking into Lahbib's 86 websites are women. Last year,
members of the official fan club hired a London pub to watch the final
episode, and when Lahbib showed up to answer questions she was mobbed.
The actress - who's in her "early thirties" - receives thousands of
letters, as well as gifts, from both men and women. "One woman wrote
telling me that she had lived in a little village all her life and
was ostracized when she came out. But since Bad Girls, people's reactions
to her have changed for the better. It's amazing to know you have
this sort of effect on someone."
Lahbib claims she has received only one negative letter, from a woman.
"She was saying, 'How could a nice girl like you allow yourself to
be used by the gay liberal front?' It quoted Sodom and Gomorrah. It
went straight in the bin," she says firmly. Actually, Lahbib was brought
up a strict Catholic, and still holds Catholic beliefs - though not
on homosexuality.
She turned down the chance to do a spread in FHM ("I said I'd be happy
to do it, with my clothes on. They didn't come back to me. Funny that,
eh?" she laughs). And she also refused to go on the children's Saturday
morning show Ant and Dec. "I'd love to do it, but not representing
Bad Girls," she explains, "It's such an adult show. I just think it's
wrong." She is also slightly concerned at the age of some of her fans.
After the first series, she did a "meet-and-greet" in Leicester. "There
were loads of teenage girls there and they had all seen the programme,"
she recalls, "That made me a little uncomfortable, not simply because
of the lesbianism, but also the drugs and the bullying."
Lahbib knows about bullying, having been the victim of racism growing
up in Scotland. "I fought back," she says. "There are a few people
in Stirling with bald patches where their hair didn't grow back."
Lahbib's grandfather was the son of a sheikh, and her father Joseph
was a French-Algerian cook who met her Scots mother while he was head
chef at Gleneagles Hotel.
And how did her Catholic family react to her love scene? "Some like
it, some don't watch. Last time I saw my granny I told her there was
a big kissing scene coming, and she said, 'Och, it's only acting,
isn't it. As long as you don't like it'."
Lahbib was initially sceptical of the lesbian storyline, believing
the idea of a prison governor falling in love with an inmate was too
far-fetched. It was only when she went to Holloway prison to research
her role that she changed her mind. "I got in contact with the ex-governor
of Holloway prison. The stories she told me were just incredible.
The suicides, riots, drugs and relationships all rang true." Lahbib
is more interested in the women's issues raised by the series than
the "Babes behind Bars" sensationalism. "The show's becoming more
political - they have a platform and they're using it."
It must be said that her role has provoked no soul-searching regarding
her own sexuality. She became engaged before Christmas to an actor
who wishes to remain nameless. So how do her lesbian storylines go
down with him? "He doesn't have a huge amount of interest. He doesn't
really watch it. It's a lot less threatening than if I was doing a
love scene with Jude Law."
The third series of Bad Girls starts on ITV on Tuesday at 9pm