‘I“I’m in denial,” says Nadia Almada, arching her well-groomed eyebrows. “I can’t comprehend it’s been 20 years.” She pauses, then laughs out loud: “20 years? I need a trigger warning…” Anyone who watched Almada smoke, dance, cry, have flashbacks and wrestle in rapid succession during the fifth series of Big Brother in the summer of 2004 will know right away. She won by her biggest margin yet, garnering nearly four million votes despite being outnumbered 50 to 1 at the start of the show.
Aged 27, she was also Big Brother’s first and to date only transgender winner. Her gender identity was revealed to viewers but not to the other housemates at Almada’s request.
It is unlikely that producers would sanction a similar arrangement today, given the heightened issues surrounding transgender women’s use of women’s spaces, but Almada says the reason she didn’t tell the other housemates about her gender identity was “to claim my own time, my own space, my own femininity, without labels. All my life, I have been dictated to by the state, the church, the community, my family about my identity – and still am! But inside the Big Brother House, I made the rules for myself.”
For her, the win was truly a personal victory; she spoke powerfully afterwards about how it felt to be accepted on her terms. But it also marked a significant moment in the public recognition of transgender identity, as it coincided with the year Labour’s Gender Recognition Act was passed, allowing transgender people to change their legal gender for the first time. As show presenter Davina McCall later said, “Britain has opened people’s eyes.”
Though Almada now lives largely out of the public eye, she spoke to the Guardian to mark the 20th anniversary of her victory, agreeing to reflect on what has changed for transgender women.
“I didn’t go there planning to be a role model or a reference point,” she says, “but inevitably I became that person, and ever since then there’s been a whole generation that has used me as their first introduction to understanding what it means to be a transgender woman.”
At 47, Almada is a little more chic and a lot more relaxed than she was in her younger days; gone are the corset dresses and tousled black curls; in their place is a sleek blonde hairstyle and a pale blue shirt dress. But she still lives in Woking, Surrey, and is surrounded by friends from her teenage years, when she grew up on the Portuguese island of Madeira. “We thought we were great” then, she says, but now “everyone has a family, a mortgage, and kids”.
In her spare time, she enjoys travel, culture, being in nature and gardening. She works as a Sassoon Academy-trained hair stylist. “It’s not a very glamorous job, but it’s not as glamorous as we think it is,” she says, a little apologetically.
Of course, she has nothing to apologise for: she made the most of the opportunity Big Brother gave her, releasing a single that reached No. 27 in the charts and appearing on other reality TV shows, but she always remained realistic about the instant fame.
“I know how shallow this industry is,” she told the Observer in her first newspaper interview since leaving Big Brother, and defied expectations by refusing to appear in a tabloid tell-all. “If people consider me a celebrity, I’d be honored, but I don’t think I deserve it. I took part in an experience and got a great response, so I’m happy with that.”
From the dreary vantage point of 2024, where every aspect of human experience seems to be pulverized through the reality TV format, it’s easy to forget the influence and ubiquity of Big Brother, the original “social experiment” entertainment of the early 2000s.
The show sparked fierce debate over whether it democratized celebrity or exposed viewers’ own banal narcissism, but it became a ratings bomb, airing six days a week and streamed live online 24 hours a day, where viewers could watch as contestants lived in specially built homes isolated from the outside world and were gradually voted out by the public until just one remained.
It’s also worth remembering how restrained celebrity was back when social media was in its infancy, when attention wasn’t split between TikTok feeds, and it was newspapers and magazines that dictated to the masses who to love and who to hate.
That was the situation when Almada, who was already a fan of the show, decided to apply.
“Big Brother celebrated real people,” she says, “and brought to the forefront minorities who aren’t often represented on television. That was one of Big Brother’s USPs – it brought to the forefront conversations that needed to be had.”
But she applies the same realism to the public reaction that she does to the celebrity Nadia created: “Nadia’s humanity is what made her so relatable and endearing,” she says, “but I’m still wondering: was it curiosity or voyeurism to see a trans woman in that scenario?”
At the time, she points out, public discussion around transgender issues was in its infancy: “Even the word ‘transgender’ was not as common, and the word ‘transsexual’ was still in use, which some people found derogatory.”
She still hears stories of people who saw her on the show, “and it was the first reference they could relate to, even if they weren’t ready for it at the time, and now they’re proud transgender women.”
She smiles. “I believe, deep down, that I have transcended all of that. I have simply become Nadia, a force to be reckoned with.”
Armada injected an undeniably fiery personality into an already explosive group of housemates, and the fifth series famously saw a serious fight break out, requiring security to intervene and briefly halting the live broadcast.
But there was also Almada’s vulnerability that became apparent in quieter moments: “For the first time in my life, I feel like a normal person,” she said in a Diary Room confessional.
“I wish I still had Nadia in my life,” she says today.
“I felt invincible.”
She previously told me she closed her TikTok account after receiving derogatory comments about her appearance, but she insists that’s not what’s making her so vulnerable: “The feeling of invincibility, the confidence that you had in your 20s, is just harder to find later on.”
Does it have anything to do with the culture wars? “It’s complicated,” she says. “Twenty years later, we’re still debating the existence of trans women, which means we haven’t moved forward as quickly as I would have hoped back then.”
“The community is more visible, more united, and has a lot to be proud of, but if the question itself still lingers…” she shook her head.
“I need to be clear that even though there is harmful rhetoric in politics, I don’t think it reflects the country as a whole. But there is a minority that say these vile things. I don’t know if they even believe it, but they do it for political gain and it’s dehumanizing.”
I wonder if she has experienced the consequences of this herself, be it online abuse or encounters on the street… I can’t finish the question until she agrees, “Libby, all my life, then and now, but now I am more sensitive to it and will not let anyone speak to you like that. I have a plan of action to report you or be very careful around you.”
So maybe her response was different: “I grew up believing that verbal abuse, physical abuse, and all that was just part of being a trans woman because it was all so underground,” she says. “So I grew up believing that the abuse was something I brought on myself, and all I could do was cry about it and move on to the next day.”
The eldest of six children, Almada spent 10 years in Madeira before her family emigrated to South Africa. But her father’s worsening alcoholism and mental and physical abuse led her mother to move the children back to the island when Almada was a teenager. Her father was a sickly child who grew up under the Salazar dictatorship and was drafted as a young man to fight for Portugal in Africa, Almada said.
“I now understand PTSD and addiction is a disease, but by speaking openly about my experience with domestic violence, I can break the cycle of shame and isolation that holds us together.”
She remembers questioning her identity from a young age and being “told not to do certain things because it was inappropriate for my gender” — a disconnect that was especially painful in her strict Catholic upbringing.
It was only after she moved to the UK that she “established” her “true identity”, and eventually spoke to her GP, who referred her to a gender identity clinic.
“It was a difficult time,” she says, “but strangely enough, I had confidence in myself and that helped me to carry on.”
After she left the island, she told her mother, with whom she remains very close, “and she said she was going to pray to the Virgin Mary and Jesus and all of Jesus’ carpenter friends, but I said, ‘OK, listen, this is reality.'”
In fact, appearing on Big Brother helped her family to come together again – her “lovely” mother was waiting for her when she left the house as winner. “It brought us together as a family and allowed us to bond again as sisters and then soon after as aunties – and we have had fewer problems.”
She has been following the latest editions of the Big Brother reboot, which began on ITV2 last year, and says she feels “very protective” of Harry, the 18-year-old contestant who came out as transgender on the show last autumn.
Some of her Portuguese friends returned home after Brexit and it left her questioning “our place in this country,” but for Almada, “Woking is my home.” Between friends and work, “I live the most heterocentric lifestyle,” she jokes.
“My energy has changed a bit since I was loud and pushy in my 20s,” she says. “I’m a bit calmer and more thoughtful now, but it’s all good.”
She recently celebrated 20 years on the show with Marco Sabba, her housemate from 2004 who later qualified as a lawyer. “Marco remains a dear friend and we share many wonderful memories.”
She told me the story of when she and Saba visited The Shard in London with their now-deceased Yorkshire terrier, and although the Shard isn’t known for being dog-friendly, Almada managed to convince the security guard.
“I carried [the dog] “I had to put my son in my purse and ask to be let through when we got to the security gate. We both have a good laugh remembering how we got him to the top.”
Nadia Almada: Still a force to be reckoned with.
