Tracy Beaker author Jacqueline Wilson confirms her adoptive mum Cam ‘is clearly gay’ ahead of new sequel series
Jacqueline Wilson has confirmed Tracy Beaker’s Cam ‘was always’ gay. (BBC)
Tracy Beaker author Jacqueline Wilson has confirmed what many have long suspected: that her adoptive mum Cam is a lesbian.
Wilson came out as gay earlier this year aged 74, opening up abut her sexuality as she published her first queer love story, Love Frankie.
In a new interview to discuss the book, Wilson revealed that although Frankie is her first LGBT+ protagonist, she’s always considered one of her most famous creations to be queer too.
“Anybody reading between the lines in the early Tracy Beaker books [would see that] her foster mum Cam, is to my mind, clearly gay,” Wilson told the Independent.
The Story of Tracy Beaker, Wilson’s 1991 book, and its CBBC adaptation, introduce Cam as an unsuccessful author who fosters Tracy. Cam’s first episode memorably sees Tracy steal Adele’s make-up in an attempt to impress her.
Tracy Beaker, serving face. (BBC)
Tracy Beaker: Cam to return in new CBBC series.
At the end of the series, Cam adopts Tracy, and the character returns in Wilson’s 2018 novel, My Mum Tracy Beaker, which is soon to be adapted as a new CBBC series slated for spring 2021.
“In the older books, when Tracy is grown up and has a daughter of her own, Cam gets herself a very nice girlfriend. I thought it was time she had a bit of fun in her life too.”
Dani Harmer, who played Tracy in the original 2002 series and its follow-ups, will return as a grown-up Tracy, now a single mother to an 11-year-old daughter.
Now 31, Harmer said she had been “desperate to find out what Tracy has been up to and where her next journey is going to take her”.
“It’s been so lovely to work with some familiar faces too. The script is brilliant and I think the audience is going to love where the story goes,” she added.
Among those familiar faces is Cam, with Lisa Coleman reprising the role, as well as Tracy’s birth mum Carly (Ruth Gemmell) and her nemesis Justine Littlewood (Montanna Thompson).
Jacqueline Wilson ‘has never been in any kind of closet’.
Jacqueline Wilson confirmed in April that she has been “very happily” with her partner of 18 years.
Speaking as Love Frankie, her 111th book, was published, she told the Guardian that she had put her “heart and soul” into the story, and knew “perfectly well that it would shine a little light on my own private life.”
“I’ve never really been in any kind of closet,” Wilson said. “It would be such old news for anybody that has ever known anything much about me. Even the vaguest acquaintance knows perfectly well that we are a couple.”
