Episode Details

An actor and activist who was diagnosed with HIV at 16, kept the secret for 15 years, turned it into a one-man show that earned 53 five-star reviews, and was cast in It's a Sin while still performing at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Summary

Nathaniel Hall grew up in Gatley, a suburb of Stockport. He was a straight-A student, head boy, and quietly realising he was gay in a school where Section 28 was still in force and the only mention of homosexuality in his entire education was a video of a man dying from AIDS in a PSHE lesson taught by his maths teacher. He wanted to wear a cream tuxedo to the prom. The hire shop didn't have one ready, so he sat on a bench in a park playing Snake on his phone. A man with bleach tips in his hair came and sat next to him.

That summer fling - possibly grooming, a question he still works through in therapy - ended when Nathaniel's parents found out. On holiday in Menorca, in a 45-degree heatwave, he fell violently ill. It wasn't the water. It was seroconversion. Two weeks before his 17th birthday, he was taken down a long corridor at Stepping Hill Hospital to a room with two chairs and a box of tissues. The nurse told him his result before she'd even sat down.

For 15 years, Nathaniel told almost nobody. He went to theatre school, graduated, worked as an actor, fell into a toxic relationship fuelled by drugs and alcohol, and watched himself lose all sense of who he was. The turning point came at a party when he looked in the mirror and couldn't recognise the person staring back - a slow-motion car crash he could see happening but couldn't stop. He started showing up for himself. He told a filmmaker he'd been working with, who said: let's make it. The result was First Time, a one-man show that premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 to 53 five-star reviews, two awards, and standing ovations every night. Russell T Davies saw it and cast him in It's a Sin. He got the phone call about the part while holding a five-star review from The Stage.

But performing his own trauma had a shadow side - what he calls a shame hangover, the feeling after a show of having opened his soul a bit too much. His second show, Toxic, sat in the messiness of life rather than offering a neat ending. Audiences found it harder. Life isn't linear. His third show, A Whole, is about finding joy in anal sex after sexual trauma, and will premiere in Manchester in 2027.

Key Moments

• [01:18] The kid from Stockport - head boy, straight As, Section 28, and the only queer representation at school: a man dying from AIDS on a TV in maths
• [03:47] The wallpaper of death - growing up absorbing the association between gay visibility and AIDS as so normalised it didn't even register as abnormal
• [06:31] The bench, the prom, and the cream tuxedo - waiting for a hire suit that hadn't arrived, playing Snake, and a man with bleach tips who sat down next to him
• [10:42] The question of grooming - something that comes up often in therapy, and the tension between wanting something and being too young for it
• [11:17] Menorca, 45 degrees, seroconversion - falling violently ill on holiday, presenting to a GP with his mother, and being told it was a waterborne virus
• [13:09] Two weeks before 17 - the long corridor at Stepping Hill, the box of tissues, and a nurse who delivered the result before she'd sat down
• [16:34] Shame entering the body - how discovering sexual pleasure and acquiring a virus at the same moment tainted everything that followed
• [17:35] Fifteen years of need-to-know - a long relationship that ended, the return to dating, and the fear of criminalisation that hung over every disclosure
• [18:30] The toxic relationship - drugs, alcohol, physi