Here's a Tamil TV talk show that will discuss homosexuality and alternative sexuality and the first to have a transgender as the anchor.
Star Vijay breaks new ground, ropes in 28-year-old transgender Rose for talk show
CHENNAI: Here is a Tamil TV talk show that will discuss homosexuality and alternative sexuality. What is more, the first such programme on Indian TV will have a transgender as the anchor.
Celebrities and common people alike will rub shoulders with Rose, a 28-year-old Chennai-based transgender to provide a half-hour weekly programme on Star Vijay that promises to evoke “emotions of all kinds in people of all kinds”.
Rose, a biomedical engineer by training and a software consultant by profession, was profiled by DNA (March 18, 2007) as one of the first in the country to come out in favour of scientific sexual reassignment surgery.
“We hope to get some new eyeballs,” Star Vijay programming head Pradeep Milroy Peter told DNA, “and definitely some raised eyebrows.”
Rose, a winner of a beauty pageant for transgenders earlier this year in Chennai, has compered a few programmes for a Tamil television channel in the UK a few years ago, but not as a transgender.
After finding it difficult to convince ‘her’ parents, Rose (self-assumed name) walked out of home, dressed as a girl, to fight for her identity and gain acceptance for her ilk.
“We have never shied away from such themes. We covered the transgenders annual get-together at Koovagam (a Tamil Nadu village) in a big way. But this programme is not going to be on just transgenders.
“It will cover a gamut of issues often considered sensitive. The idea is not to shock anyone, but to present such themes in a sensible way for the general audience,” Peter said. Without divulging the title of the show, he added that it would have a lot of real life incidents and analyses, with experts and celebrity guests thrown in too.
Rose, who aspires to be an actor, is thrilled. “This is a dream come true,” she told DNA. “I have been working on a few movie scripts with the problems faced by transgenders as the central theme. The TV show will make me popular and prompt some film producer to come forward.”
Will Rose narrate her struggle story? “After the audience gets used to the anchor and some curiosity levels are generated, she may tell her tale. But Rose’s story will be just one of the episodes,” Peter said.
The programme, which is in its pre-production stages, is likely to go on air in a month. The producers hope that there will be enough sponsors for this unusual theme.
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