Leila Navabi makes BBC documentary Humorous, Homosexual & Welsh

UniqueFriday twenty third September 2022, 10:32am by Jay Richardson

• Leila Navabi has made the BBC Wales documentary Funny, Gay & Welsh, about her battle to return out as homosexual whereas rising up in Cardiff
• The comedian has now returned to the town and the movie follows her as she prepares to carry out her largest ever gig
• Navabi’s Radio 4 comedy drama, I’ve Been So Touched, a loosely autobiographical story about sexual assault, aired earlier this week

Leila Navabi

Stand-up Leila Navabi has made a BBC documentary about her battle to return out as homosexual whereas rising up in Cardiff and returning to the town as a queer comedian to carry out her largest ever gig, British Comedy Information can completely reveal.

Leila Navabi: Funny, Gay & Welsh will air on BBC One Wales on October eleventh.

Within the 30-minute movie, Navabi recounts how as a closeted teenager she “hated” residing within the Welsh capital and thought of killing herself moderately than have folks know she was a lesbian.

“I could not face the judgement and thought that that may be much less painful for everybody” she displays within the documentary.

At 16, she was outed by an ex-boyfriend, recalling how she “felt like an atomic bomb had been let off and I simply wished to get out of the firing line”. Quickly after, she moved to London and started going to see stand-up at Camden Comedy Membership, earlier than taking to the stage herself.

Now, feeling homesick for household, she’s returned to Cardiff. In the midst of the movie, she visits her old fashioned, finds a thriving queer scene within the metropolis and prepares to carry out a work-in-progress efficiency of her 2023 Edinburgh Fringe debut, Composition.

Stand-up and songs from “a small, brown lesbian rambling about my trauma”, she nervously prepares for the present on the Glee venue in Cardiff, Wales’ largest comedy membership.

Funny, Gay & Welsh is produced and directed by Rosemary Baker (Gareth Gwynn Declares Independence From Wales) for Tuesday’s Child (Guessable?, Ghost Bus Tours) and was commissioned for BBC Wales by Sorelle Neil.

Navabi co-wrote and starred within the short-form BBC One Wales sitcom Vandullz final 12 months, about an indie band, through which her character Nadz tries to maintain her sexuality from her bandmates.

She additionally wrote the comedy drama I’ve Been So Touched, which aired on Radio 4 on Thursday, a few comic who’s sexually assaulted at a tv recording and depends on her pals to assist her cope, echoing her personal expertise.

Additional credit embody writing for the BBC’s upcoming reboot of Jack Whitehall‘s Bad Education and Spencer Jones‘ ITV comedy Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, in addition to presenting the CBBC science collection Do not Blame Me, Blame My Mind with fellow stand-up Ken Cheng.

“I’m fairly bored with being advised (nearly completely by heterosexual folks, completely completely by white folks) that ‘nobody cares anymore’ in regards to the giant chunk of my id that I spent quite a lot of my life desperately, ceaselessly ashamed of” Navabi wrote final 12 months in an opinion piece for BBC Wales across the broadcast of Vandullz. “To not say that the billowing smoke of self-disgust does not plague me nonetheless, every so often. It does.”

“Popping out isn’t one singular occasion” she added. “The primary time you utter these phrases it could really feel momentous / nauseating / thrilling / alien, however you rapidly realise you’ll be able to’t ship a mass textual content letting everybody you will have ever and can ever meet know that you simply’re really an enormous fruit. I’ve at all times promised myself that if I am fortunate sufficient to inform my very own tales on display screen, I’ll honour the truth of this case. And guess what? It is occurred.

“What I used to be eager to highlight was the interim interval between popping out to your self and earlier than sharing with anybody else. There’s one thing sacred about that point. The fantastic thing about inside acceptance, uncorrupted by exterior notion.

“Pleasure and disgrace are like love and hatred. We’re inexplicably able to feeling each without delay. The extent of disgrace thrust upon you is at all times in direct correlation to the pleasure you had in sharing your fact within the first place. And that is why I agreed to put in writing this text. Despite the fact that it cringes me to my core.”

Forward of her Fringe run subsequent 12 months, Navabi highlighted the dearth of variety at this 12 months’s pageant, tweeting final month that “being a brown comic in Edinburgh is like being a hockey participant in a swimming competitors.”

The remark appeared to lead to Sky Studios producer Adnan Ahmed, chair of this 12 months’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards, blocking her on Twitter.

Final week Navabi adopted up by tweeting: “I wasn’t nasty or contrarian or brash or merciless. I used to be unhappy as a result of it appeared like the one option to be celebrated within the mainstream comedy business was to be white. Sadder now.

“I do know it is a onerous time to name these things out. I do not blame anybody who cannot deliver themselves to talk up as a result of they’re afraid of dropping the already scarce work alternatives. However do examine in in your POC pals. We do not have a voice to make use of even when we wished to, it appears.”