Hollyoaks star Joe McGann has seemingly deleted his Twitter account following an online fall-out with former co-star Annie Wallace.
Joe, 63, played Edward Hutchinson on the Channel 4 soap from 2019 until 2020, while 56-year-old Annie has played Sally St Claire since 2015.
The pair have clashed over trans rights views – with Annie, who herself is transgender, arguing that Joe has been re-tweeting anti-trans comments.
A twitter argument erupted between the pair over the weekend – but now only Annie’s side of the argument can be seen as Joe’s Twitter account seems to have since been deleted entirely.
Annie – who is a patron of transgender rights charity Mermaids – can be seen responding to a message shared by Joe, replying: “Principles? Apparently ex-cast member Joe would rather I’d used the Gents at work it seems.”
The star continued: “You know what you’re doing, and you know what your opinion is. It directly impacted me at work, despite my pleas for you to understand the effect it was having.
“It escalated in 2020 and I had to choose between having a public row with a cast member or calming the waters.”
Annie’s tweets continue, suggesting there was an element of reaction and interaction from Joe before he deleted his account.
The soap actress can be seen tweeting: “The problem Joe, as has been the case for a few years now, is that you reliably retweet the anti-trans cause ‘without comment’. It's a lazy way of attributing your support without attracting too much backlash. But It's gone on too long and I'm too fed up of it.”
Annie continues, hinting at behind-the-scenes arguments on the set of Hollyoaks, writing: “What I regret is not airing these disagreements in public when they originally occurred, but you were a cast member then and I felt that creating a row (especially in the aftermath of the HO racism accusations) was counter productive for all of us.”
In further tweets, Annie writes: “You couldn’t understand the stress and upset you were causing me by tweeting support of Forstater, Bell and the organisations set up to roll back trans rights. I msg [sic] you here, and I tried talking to you in the green room. None of it sank in.”
In that tweet, Annie draws attention to controversial legal cases including that of Maya Forstater who was sacked from her job as a tax expert after stating people cannot change their biological sex – with Maya going on to win an appeal at an employment tribunal last year.
While Keira Bell, who underwent gender reassignment surgery and took puberty blockers as a teen before taking action to re-identify as a woman, won a court case against the NHS Gender Identity Development Service to prevent other teens being able to have access to puberty blockers before they were 16.
However, that ruling was overturned in the Court of Appeal last year.
Annie went on: “Anyone else, and I’d have taken them to task on Twitter, but I didn’t. I kept my head down and kept the peace, choosing instead to avoid you instead. Easy because we didn’t have many scenes together. Imagine for a moment what that was like for me.”
Further interaction seemingly occurs before Annie abruptly tweets: “Fine, we’re done.”
Fans took note that Joe’s twitter page now appears blank with a statement reading: “This account doesn’t exist.”
Annie addressed the apparent deletion of Joe’s account, tweeting: “Some of you might be a tad puzzled by the exchange between Joe McGann and myself today, as he's shut his account down so his postings can no longer be read, for his own reasons.”
While the star also took action to assure one follower that she had not been the victim of workplace bullying, tweeting back: “No, it WASN’T workplace bullying. I’m quite clear on that. It was differences of opinion on trans issues, which I decided to keep to myself at the time.”
Mirror has contacted Joe’s spokesperson for comment.
