Phoebe Waller-Bridge has revealed that she desperately wanted to be a boy when she was younger, and would have considered becoming transgender had that option been open to her.

In an interview with America’s NPR radio this weekend, the Fleabag and Killing Eve creator says she shaved off her hair when she was about six and started wearing boys’ clothing, as she insisted that her parents called her “Alex”.

“I just thought [boys] just had more fun. I just wanted to be out climbing the trees and wearing comfortable clothes,” Waller-Bridge recalls. “[…] And a lot of my friends were really into the dresses and the dolls and all that kind of stuff; it just wasn’t my bag and it just seemed like you had to choose one or the other at that time.”

“I remember going into Gap once when I was about seven and the guy coming up to me when I was with my mum and he said, ‘So what does the young man want?’” she adds. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, convinced.’”

The actor and scriptwriter says she was “fervent” about identifying as a boy: “It was like I just desperately wanted to be a boy more than anything else. If it had been taken seriously by my school or something or those options had been given to me, I probably would’ve jumped at it.”

I wanted to be a boy, says Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge