America -there is no Sharon.

Say it isn’t so…

It now appears there could be no ‘Sharon Strezlecki’ in the American version of Kath & Kim. And the role won’t simply be retitled as Debbie / Heather or Donna.

According to one speculative report, she is to be replaced by: a gay male character.

The UK’s PopBitch this week writes that “The third character in the show, Sharon, has been binned as the actress who portrayed her, Magda Szubanski, refused to allow her character to cross the Atlantic. Sharon is now a gay guy.”

It is true that Magda owns the character of Sharon, first created in the original sketches that appeared on Fast Forward / Big Girl’s Blouse. It would be surprising to learn that she “refused” this for her good mates Jane and Gina, so I’d be looking for more to support that claim.

But it does bring the spotlight back onto the only lead role that doesn’t appear to have been cast.

Early reports indicated the role would be written as ‘Debbie Cox’ a wildlife preservation worker. Then there was talk of ‘Heather.’ There were even some seemingly legitimate auditions popping up on YouTube for a role known as ‘Donna’, possibly as a Latino friend.

And there is that role of ‘Troy’ to be played by Lebanese actor Tony Yalda, who played a flamingly overt role in American Dreamz. He is listed in the casting on the K&K page at Wikipedia.

Who’s to say whether he is simply an incidental character in the first ep, or, could he even be playing “a gay guy?”