Married at First Sight UK star Ella Morgan has responded to the news of her groundbreaking return to television.
Recently, it was announced that Ella will appear in this year’s edition of Celebs Go Dating, making her the first trans celebrity to be featured on the Channel 4 dating show.
Taking to Instagram, Ella shared a teaser for the upcoming series, which introduces this year’s lineup of celebs. She captioned it: “Celebs Go Dating is BACK… and SO AM I! I’ve joined the line up for Series 13 of @celebsgodating with these absolute icons!” She added, “Proud to be making history again, as the agency’s first ever trans celeb! Marrying a stranger didn’t exactly work out so let’s try my hand at dating first! This is going to be a fun summer! Coming soon.”
Ella’s MAFS co-stars quickly expressed their excitement in the comments section. Laura Jayne Vaughan joked, “Wohoooooo, third time lucky,” while Tasha Jay wrote, “That’s my girl.”
This year, Ella will be joined at the agency by Love Island’s Chris Taylor, ex-Coronation Street star Helen Flanagan, Gogglebox’s Stephen Webb, pop star Jamelia, and Made in Chelsea’s Tristan Phipps. This isn’t Ella’s first time making history; she was also the first trans contestant on Channel 4’s Married at First Sight last year.
In an interview with Digital Spy at the time, she said, “It’s the first time Channel 4 or anyone has really done this, and we’ve had very limited representation in the media at all, especially in the UK.” She continued, “When it comes to reality shows, apart from Nadia [Almada] on Big Brother, I feel like there’s not really been that much representation. So it feels amazing.”
Ella acknowledged the potential backlash, saying, “I knew I was going to get hate from very uneducated, one-minded people… People are saying things like ‘You’re a man’ or ‘You’re this, you’re that’. And it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. But I know that hopefully, a lot of those people might change their minds, and change their perception of trans people once they watch the show.”