During November Transgender Awareness Week takes place week beginning the 14th and finishes with Transgender Day of Remembrance on the 20th. With this in mind we have chosen Riley Carter Millington as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.
Riley is an actor known for playing Kyle Slater in EastEnders. He is the first transgender man to play a regular transgender character in British soap history.
Riley is from Manchester and studied drama at Eccles Sixth Form Centre and on the BA (Hons) Acting at the University of Lancashire before being cast in EastEnders. His character, Kyle, is also transgender. His casting was praised by presenter Paris Lees as “the biggest thing to happen for the transgender community in Britain this decade. … As a pop culture moment this is massive and a sign of the times.”
In 2015 Riley was voted no 1 in The Independent Newspaper’s Rainbow List – their annual celebration of influential lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people in Britain, the first transgender man to top the list. The judges believed that by being open about who he is and appearing in one of Britain’s most-watched television shows, he would transform lives.
Riley is currently starring in SAFE a new production at the London Theatre Workshop addressing the big issue of homelessness among LGBT youth.
To find out more about Transgender Awareness Week and Transgender Day of Remembrance see here https://www.glaad.org/transweek