A HIGH school chemistry teacher is the last player to enter the Channel 4 show The Circle.
Hailing from Blackburn, the 28-year-old teacher Shabaz is playing another teacher called Alice on the show.
Shabaz is already popular on social media, on TikTok under the username @shabazsays he has 40,000 followers and 2 million likes for his videos.
He also has a YouTube channel with almost 3,000 subscribers.
The Circle is now locked - meet our final new Player!
— The Circle (@C4TheCircle) April 5, 2021
Chemistry teacher Shabaz aka 'Alice' is hoping "pizza, gin and staying in" will get the Players on side 🍕 #TheCircle pic.twitter.com/cqaSsYrKv4
He told Telly Mix: "I thought it was such an interesting concept. The minute I saw it, I knew I’d want to play this girl. I’ve been on social media for so long and this girl has always sort of been my competition.
"She’s the type of person that everybody hangs on her every word; everybody buys her merch; she gets millions of views. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to live in this type of person’s shoes and see what it’s like having the world treat me completely differently."
Going into the game as Alice, Shabaz hopes to win over everyone with her bubbly personality and says they share political beliefs.
He told Telly Mix: "Growing up, I never really saw people like me online. Alice has always been a role model to all types of people. I call her my “last girl” because she’s the girl that survives to the end of the horror film. She’s Sidney Prescott. She's that girl who goes on the journey from being the simple girl next door to crawling through the mud as a survivor.
"When I was growing up, and I’m sure it’s true for a lot of people of colour, this type of girl was the cool girl role model portrayed in the media and it didn’t make a difference to us. Whereas I think for white people, they wouldn’t have seen many role models from another race."
The Circle is a Channel 4 game show where players must choose to enter either as themselves or as a catfish, then as they play from their own circle apartments, must take part in online game tasks and chats to find out who is really themselves and who is not.
The Circle 2021 airs Sunday to Fridays at 10pm on Channel 4 with episodes available to All 4.
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