OTTplay Now You Know - Gentleman Jack

Welcome to another episode of OTTplay Now You Know , one podcast that gives you lesser-known trivia, anecdotes, and even facts of popular films and shows. Im your host Nikhil.

The hit BBC series, Gentleman Jack, set in 19th century England, chronicles the life of industrialist Anne Lister, one of history’s first openly lesbian women. Created by Sally Wainwright, the series stars Suranne Jones in the lead as Anne Lister. Gentleman Jack has returned for a second season this past month with the season finale expected to air on the 29th of May and can be streamed on Disney+ Hotstar in India. Lets get into some trivia now.

1. Gentlemen Jack is adapted from a collection of diaries written by Anne Lister. They contain over 4 million words, with most of them written in a secret code.
2. Anne Lister is described as masculine for her time for regularly wearing black attires and researching and studying subjects that men delved into at the time. This earned her the moniker of ‘Gentleman’, which was used as a slur, whereas ‘Jack’ was also a slur to describe a lesbian. However, in recent years Anne Lister's outfits have become an inspiration among the British LGBTQ community.
3. Despite facing social stigma, Anne Lister was self-aware of her sexuality and lived openly as a lesbian, which essentially made her modern history’s first lesbian.
4. When the show was initially announced as an eight-part series by BBC and HBO in March 2017, it was titled Shibden Hall after the name of Lister’s ancestral home
5. The show’s creator Sally Wainwright grew up in Yorkshire near Shibden Hall. Wainwright had dreamt of creating a drama about Anne Lister’s life for nearly 20 years before Gentleman Jack was finally produced.
6. Shibden Hall has now become a very popular tourist destination with its visitors tripling in numbers in recent years after the show’s success. As a result, the opening hours have been increased significantly to accommodate this surge in numbers. The exteriors and interiors were used as filming locations for the show.

Well thats the OTTplay Now You Know for today, until the next episode its your host Nikhil signing out.

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-Written by Ryan Gomez