What It Feels Like For A Girl breakout star lands next major role in Channel 4 series

Ellis Howard, the breakout star of the BBC’s transgender drama What It Feels Like For A Girl, has lined up his next big role in new Channel 4 comedy drama, The Rachel Incident.

Ellis Howard, 29, is set to play the “insistently heterosexual” leading character James in The Rachel Incident, which is adapted from Caroline O’Donoghue’s 2023 novel of the same name.

He will be joined in the cast by BAFTA-nominated Extraordinary actress Máiréad Tyers, who will play the titular role of Rachel.

“Set in Cork in 2010, Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James – and it is love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate, and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever,” reads an official synopsis.

Set against the backdrop of the financial crash and its impact on Ireland, Rachel and James “run riot” with their “bohemian existence” in Cork.

“When Rachel admits to a huge crush on her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a launch for his new book at the store, with the hope that she might seduce him afterwards,” the synopsis continues.

“But Fred, as it turns out, has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s wife Deenie, an incredibly cool and well-connected literary editor.”

The Rachel Incident is further described as a a story “aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humour about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three”.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms star Daniel Ings will play Fred and Normal People actress Sarah Greene will play Deenie.

Other cast members include House of Guinness actor Cúán Hosty-Blaney, Bad Sisters actor Ciarán Dowd, Malpractice star Helen Behan, Sherlock and Daughter actor Ardal O’Hanlon, and KIN star Maria Doyle Kennedy.

The eight-part series recently commenced filming in Cork. It is set to air on Channel 4, and is being produced in collaboration between Element Pictures, the production company behind Normal People and Poor Things, UCP and PAGEBOY Productions.

PAGEBOY Productions was founded in 2021 by trans actor Elliot Page, with the aim to “champion underrepresented voices”.

Ellis Howard got his screen breakthrough last year with the BBC’s powerful and moving drama What It Feels Like For A Girl. Based on the memoir by trans author Paris Lees, the series followed Howard as young teen Byron, who has to balance the euphoria of finding their queer clan of misfits in Nottingham, England, with the lows of being a closeted queer teen – including exploitative sex, substance abuse, and being coerced into committing a crime.

PinkNews rated What It Feels Like For A Girl as the best LGBTQ+ TV show of 2025. Howard was honoured by the BAFTA Breakthrough programme for his role in the series.

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