With a profession spanning 4 many years, throughout TV, music, radio and style, Dannii Minogue is just not somebody you’d anticipate to get nervous.
The Australian star has survived the tabloid circus of her time on The X Issue, and endured a lifetime batting away comparisons between her and sister Kylie. However immediately, sitting in a gathering room within the BBC’s Broadcasting Home in London, she’s on tenterhooks.
“I’m truly getting extra nervous now desirous about [it],” she tells PinkNews.
She’s speaking, zealously, concerning the new BBC Three courting present for queer girls, I Kissed A Woman, which she hosts. It’s the primary of its form in British TV historical past, and follows final yr’s profitable I Kissed A Boy, for queer males.
Contestants in each sequence are paired up, and go in for a kiss earlier than saying a phrase to one another. Then, the solid keep in a masseria in Italy, get to know each other, and work out whether or not they need to keep of their assigned pairs or get with another person.
“It’s scorching, it’s horny, and so they’re simply uninhibited, very assured in themselves,” Minogue says of the solid.
It’s no surprise she’s been anxious about creating the present. As a star who has been an lively LGBTQ+ ally for the reason that begin of her profession, the success of this new enterprise rests on extra than simply viewing figures. In Minogue’s eyes, her complete relationship with the queer neighborhood was at stake.
“There was a threat hooked up to it that was extra about, ‘I hope the neighborhood we’re representing likes this. I hope they settle for it, and I hope they embrace it’,” she says.
There are a number of explanation why “nobody else put their hand up” to create a queer courting present earlier than this one, she believes. First, as LGBTQ+ lives grow to be more and more politicised, networks have needed to navigate having viewers who “don’t need to see queer lives and queer romance on TV”.
After which there’s the worry that the present would someway fail its important audience. “You could possibly be simply as extremely judged [by] the neighborhood who go: ‘Properly, that’s not proper, or that’s not me, or it might have been executed higher’,” Minogue provides.
Earlier than she signed as much as do I Kissed A Boy in 2022, she went all out to verify BBC Three and manufacturing firm Twofour have been approaching a queer courting present fastidiously. “It needed to be executed proper,” she says firmly.
“I imply, I completely grilled them.” She drags out the phrases, conjuring up a picture of her in a boardroom someplace, promising hell to pay ought to the present’s executives fumble the ball.
“You could possibly think about what my life could be like, if I’ve had such an important relationship with the queer neighborhood, then all of the sudden I make [a] present that’s horrible or handled anybody badly,” she says. “I wasn’t gonna threat friendships and a lifetime of this wonderful relationship with the neighborhood to do one thing like that.”
Lately, viewers have grow to be more and more involved bout how significantly courting and actuality reveals deal with contestants – and their well-being. Some former contestants have alleged that The X Issue, on which Minogue was a choose between 2007 and 2010, didn’t.
With I Kissed A Woman and its male counterpart, she did her “due diligence” to verify the solid have been sorted correctly.
She guarantees the present is “actual” and none of interactions between the solid are “provoked”. There was a psychiatrist on board for day by day of filming, and beforehand, when the solid was being chosen. For each iterations, the crew have been largely queer too (though there have been a couple of straight folks concerned, Minogue included – regardless of incorrect reviews final week that she had come out as queer).
Minogue seems the proper host. Whereas she solely ever interacts with the solid whereas delivering bulletins and staging the “Kiss Off”, the place contestants select in the event that they need to stay of their present partnerships, she appears to be extra of a cheerleader of the contestants than the presenter of the present.
She engages in a back-and-forth, seems genuinely within the relationships and appears as if she’s having as a lot enjoyable as they’re. She’s one in all us, watching the drama and the steamy scenes unfold, with a glint in her eye.
“I care a lot. It’s a model and I need it to be sorted, liked, nurtured and it’s gonna develop,” she smiles. “I’ve at all times stated with TV that the viewers is just not silly, they’re actually savvy. No matter your intention is, and your vitality, folks really feel it.”
Throughout The X Issue, she says she genuinely needed to impart her information of the music trade to the singing hopefuls, and assist them within the early levels of their careers. With I Kissed A Woman, “I need these women to have the very best time. I need them to have the ability to return out on the planet and say, it is a nice expertise. And if somebody got here as much as them and stated, ‘I used to be considering of doing it, do you suppose I ought to do it?’ I need them to say yeah.”
Minogue’s historical past of supporting the LGBTQ+ neighborhood is intensive. Her first efficiency at Sydney’s Homosexual and Lesbian Mardi Gras was again in 1998. She’s headlined thrice since, attending the parade and watching it on TV when not performing.
The “Put the Needle On It” singer is way extra clued up on LGBTQ+ historical past than most superstar allies: Throughout our dialog, she explains intimately how lesbian girls supported homosexual males on the peak of the Aids disaster within the Nineteen Eighties, speaks at size concerning the security and safety function of Dykes on Bikes teams who lead Satisfaction parades, and admits to crying whereas listening to The Log Books, a podcast exploring the notes of volunteers on the UK’s Switchboard LGBT+ helpline, which has simply celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
Final yr, she donated all earnings from her single “We Might Be The One” to the charity, and spent a day with a few of the volunteers.
However her affinity goes properly past understanding queer historical past. Lengthy earlier than I Kissed… got here alongside, she was taking steps to assist the neighborhood. She’s supported HIV charities, together with the Bobby Goldsmith Basis, in Australia, and the Terrence Higgins Belief in London.
In 2004, she marked World Aids Day with a photoshoot for the latter.
“It was about attempting to open up the dialog with youthful individuals who solely knew from their dad and mom, Aids… scary… Grim Reaper,” she recollects. She needed to bust myths that lingered on. “There weren’t many celebrities who have been going to place their hand up and say, ‘I’ll speak about this’.”
Homosexual males’s love for her is properly documented, however has she been showered with the identical love by queer girls? “I did really feel it,” she says.
“Eternal Night time”, launched in 1999, is devoted to the neighborhood. The music video is laced with dolled-up drag queens, sweaty our bodies and same-sex smooches. At one level, even Minogue kisses one other lady.
“I’d by no means seen that in a video earlier than, so I used to be like, I’d actually wish to make that,” she remembers. It’s her licence to host I Kissed A Woman. “Persons are like, why are you proper for this present? And also you go, ‘Already executed it’.”
She’s learnt lots via watching the present’s queer contestants, and is now adept in lesbian lingo. Let’s simply say she is aware of her black cats from her golden retrievers.
“Probably the most shocking and memorable, as a result of it was the primary time I heard it,” she reveals with a cheeky grin, “was ‘pillow princess‘.”
For these not within the know, a pillow princess is somebody who prefers to be a taker, not a giver. “I might blush very simply,” Minogue laughs.
She is assured that I Kissed A Woman can be as massive successful as I Kissed A Boy was final yr. However her nerves come from a spot of care. “Being concerning the women, it’s so explicit, so underrepresented, that there’s this starvation for it,” she says.
Plus, she is aware of the sequence might propel the present to an enormous new viewers.
There may be such little lesbian illustration in relation to courting reveals across the globe that I Kissed A Woman is being mentioned by social media customers internationally. One TikTok concerning the present, by a US influencer, has been seen nearly a million instances.
“The ladies have sparked one thing on social media that didn’t occur with the boys,” she says. “The boys opened the primary door, the women might smash it to a unique stage.”
Minogue might have had offered round eight million information, and starred in a few of TV’s largest reveals, however it’s evident that I Kissed… is one the proudest milestones in her lengthy profession.
She talks about it with ardour, sincerity and a real understanding of why it issues a lot to the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. When it airs, she’ll be in London, watching with delight, surrounded by her homosexual and feminine mates.
“[It’s] like while you hear your report on the radio for the primary time. It’s electrical. That’s your child,” she says. “That is going to have a wide-reaching and long-lasting impact on folks.”
The primary two episodes of I Kissed A Woman are streaming on BBC iPlayer now. Following episodes will air on BBC Three at 9pm on Sundays and Mondays.