Suzy Eddie Izzard made sure she had her new name all ready to go for International Women’s Day. She announced it on March 7 while appearing on Matt Forde’s The Political Party podcast, and revealed she’d always had a place for it in her heart.
“There’s another name I’m going to add in as well, which is Suzy,” she told Forde. “Which I wanted to be since I was 10. I’m going to be Suzy Eddie Izzard.”
In the same conversation, she explained her pronouns, saying that although she “prefer[red] to see she/her, I don’t mind he/him.” Izzard actually first started using she/her publicly back in 2020 when appearing on Sky’s Portrait Artist of the Year, saying on the show at the time: “This is the first program I’ve asked if I can be ‘she’ and ‘her.’ This is a little transition period… I’m gender fluid. I just want to be based in girl mode from now on.”
Izzard is currently one of the most widely-known transgender women in Britain, both in the entertainment world and the political one. She attempted to become Labour MP for Sheffield Central in 2022, and was ultimately unsuccessful, but vowed to bounce back. She told Matt Forde: “I’d still love to be an MP for Sheffield, anywhere up North. If there is a North/South divide—I wanna fight for the North.”
Izzard’s done a lot of fighting. In 2017, prior to adopting she/her pronouns, she spoke to the Hollywood Reporter about the process of coming out. She said: “If you are coming out as transgender or gay or lesbian, it’s such a tough rite of passage and quest. It assaults your senses because, back in ‘85, everyone said, ‘No, no. Hide about it.’ I just thought they were all wrong. The humiliation period, the initial period, is so tough. If you keep at it, it gets better.”
While that doesn’t really add up with the defense of J.K. Rowling she mounted in 2021, it’s good to see her entering this new period of her life with the name she always dreamed of.
(featured image: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
