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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘THERE WAS JUST THIS BEAUTIFUL OPENNESS’: BEHIND THE SCENES OF
HEARTSTOPPER’S STEAMIEST SEASON YET  
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Scott Bryan
September 27, 2024
The Guardian
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_ For its third series, hit LGBTQ+ teen drama is entering the wild
new world of sex – while getting darker and scarier. The cast talk
love, longing and courgetti pasta _

‘I don’t know how we do it’ … Kit Connor and Joe Locke in
Heartstopper. , Photograph: Samuel Dore/Netflix

 

Inside a disused school in Buckinghamshire, grey-locker-strewn
hallways have been painted a brilliant blue. Flowers bloom across the
floors of long-abandoned classrooms and windows have rainbow hand
prints drawn all over them.

This is the set of Heartstopper
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the hit Netflix series that follows a set of mostly LGBTQ+ friends as
they traverse the rocky terrain of teenage relationships. Each vibrant
room is part of its creator Alice Oseman
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drive to match the lively visuals of the graphic novels
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TV show is adapted from. They are so vivid that, at times, it feels
like the animated sparks you see on screen when characters fall for
each other will pop out at any moment.

So why do I have a massive knot in my stomach?

I can’t work it out. For one thing, spending time with the show’s
LGBTQ+ team is a very charming experience. The cast are close knit,
with many of them living in the same blocks of flats during filming,
taking turns to make dinner. “I don’t know how we do it,” says
Joe Locke – who stars as one of the two leads, alongside his
onscreen boyfriend Kit Connor
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“We will spend 12 hours a day with each other and still spend the
next five hours cooking each other dinner.”

The previous night Tobie Donovan, who plays obsessive book reader
Isaac, made hamburgers and homemade chips. Tonight, William Gao, the
actor behind hopelessly love-stricken teen Tao, is making courgette
pasta. “You don’t realise until you’re on a different job and
you’re like: ‘Oh, wow, that is so unique,’” says Gao. “Long
may those Come Dine With Me wine nights continue.”

There is also nothing remotely nerve-racking about meeting Oseman. She
is incredibly approachable, down to earth and a tour de force – she
wrote the books the series is based on and all the scripts for the
adaptation, despite not having previously worked in television. She is
on set most days, involved in all aspects of production from the
clothes the characters wear to their individual bedrooms – which are
flat-packed, constructed and filmed in the school. If any of the
actors have a question about their character, they can ask her on set
or simply drop her a WhatsApp. “She always has the answer for every
question you might have, which makes us feel very at ease,” says
Locke.

[Up to their necks … The cast of Heartstopper, including (far right)
Joe Locke and (second from right) Kit Connor.]View image in fullscreen

Up to their necks … The cast of Heartstopper, including (far right)
Joe Locke and (second from right) Kit Connor. Photograph: Netflix

Oseman keeps her fandom happy by ensuring the graphic novels and the
show are in sync. Pages of the original are stuck up on the wall of a
production office, so the team can work out the camera angles they can
replicate, which are then noticed and shared
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cast are also given the books alongside the scripts to help them learn
more about their characters, though not for series three as the books
hadn’t finished being drawn. (“There was a brief period where I
was literally doing the same story in two different versions at the
same time,” says Oseman.)

Perhaps the reason for my unease comes from the new direction of
Heartstopper’s third series. The first two followed many of the
characters realising their LGBTQ+ identity and exploring their
feelings for each other. Series three is darker, with Charlie (Locke)
experiencing mental health struggles and an eating disorder, as a more
vulnerable Nick (Connor) feels helpless in the face of his partner’s
struggles.

“He doesn’t know how to help Charlie,” says Connor. “And that
is a big thing, him coming to terms with that. He doesn’t know if
it’s gonna be OK.” Until now, Connor believes, Nick has been
mature and always knows what to say, “but it makes it even more
interesting to come to a point where Nick and Charlie are confronted
with something that they do not know how to even talk about”.

The message that comes through clearly is that love and goodwill is
not enough to help Charlie: he needs medical professionals. In the
books, this message comes from Nick’s mum, played in the show by
Olivia Colman, but due to the actor’s unavailability it comes
from Aunt Diane, portrayed by Hayley Atwell. What follows is a break
in the show’s traditional style, reflecting the gravitas of
Charlie’s mental health journey. “When I was a teenager, I watched
and read a lot of stories about characters with mental illnesses,”
says Oseman, “and often there is the narrative that a mentally ill
character falls in love or finds this person who solves all of their
problems. I’ve always felt that that’s not realistic.

[Yasmin Finney and William Gao in Heartstopper.]View image in
fullscreen

Trans mission … Yasmin Finney and William Gao in
Heartstopper. Photograph: Samuel Dore/Netflix

“Especially for a teenager like Nick, who at that point in the story
is literally a 16-year-old kid. He’s not equipped to know exactly
what he needs to do when his boyfriend clearly has a quite severe
mental illness … Love is wonderful, but it doesn’t solve all your
problems.”

Season three isn’t a total gear shift. The show still taps into a
relatable, hopeful exploration of identity, delving into Issac’s
asexuality and aromanticism – the feeling of having little to no
romantic attraction – and the misconceptions of it that others can
have. “[Oseman] writes about the blossoming maturity of young people
in a way that feels like they can identify with it,” says Patrick
Walters, an executive producer of the series. “And it captures those
small moments that are actually really massive for young people.”

The main characters navigate sex for the first time, including Elle
(Yasmin Finney) exploring sex as a young trans woman with her
boyfriend Tao. And, as you’d expect from Heartstopper, it’s done
in a typically thoughtful, insightful way. “I think it is complex
for her,” says Finney. “It’s always complex for trans people,
really, because you have gender dysphoria, which you have to battle
through, and sometimes you don’t necessarily feel comfortable
trading sexual interactions with a partner. And I think it really
shows this season – it’s more about being comfortable with
someone, but Tao and Elle have been best friends for so
many years.”

“I’m so happy we’re telling this part of their story,” says
Gao. “And we put a lot of work into discussing it first.”
Rehearsals featured discussions with the team – including an
intimacy director – on how to approach it in the right way. “ We
were like: ‘Yaz, tell us about your experiences,’ and she led the
conversation, which was really inspiring. That meant that when we came
to shoot it, there was just this beautiful openness.”

And after Elle’s artwork goes viral on social media, she is invited
for a radio interview about her work, only to be unexpectedly cornered
and asked to respond to transphobic comments. “This season we have
an air of realism with what she goes through when she’s being
questioned,” says Finney. “It’s not like some of the shows with
trans representation, where you have negatives – they’re getting
bullied, or hate-crimed. It’s more like small nuances of
transphobia, sort of like journalism … all that stuff I have had to
experience as Yasmin as well.”

[Flowered up … Writer Scott Bryan on the Heartstopper.]View image in
fullscreen

Flowered up … Writer Scott Bryan on the set of
Heartstopper. Photograph: Samuel Dore/Netflix

Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey also makes an appearance, cameoing as
Jack Maddox, a celebrity and author who Charlie has a crush on. His
appearance came about after Patrick Walters bumped into him at
Glastonbury. “He came up to me and was like: ‘Oh my god,
Heartstopper, I love it.’ He was so effusive. And he’s such a
sweet, lovely man.”

It’s another lovely tale to hear. Yet this knot in my stomach just
won’t quit. Then I am taken past a mural in the school hallway and
I slowly realise why. The artwork is a gigantic blue wave painted on
the wall. It is a classic Heartstopper image that looks as if it was
hand-drawn by Oseman, bursting with colour and care. I’m told that
as this is a filming location, sections of the school have to go back
to how they were before. Murals are whitewashed, bright lockers
painted back to grey. (“I was just walking through the corridor …
and I was like: ‘This is so sad!’ Heartstopper has been literally
painted away,” Oseman later reflects.)

Then it hits me. This is the first school I have been in since I left
my own 20 years ago. It was a school I was keen to forget after two
years of name-calling, homophobia and being singled out by pupils and,
looking back, at times even teachers. The first series of
Heartstopper_ _caused me to face my own past, a realisation that
things could have been better. With bad old memories looping in my
head, I sent a letter to my school to ask what had changed.
I received a response, highlighting a zero tolerance policy on
bullying, adding “as a school, and hopefully as a society, we have
come a long way since 2007” and suggesting I could visit.

I jumped at the chance to see first-hand what had changed, yet the
correspondence faded to nothing. Perhaps term got in the way, I
thought. But given I’m at a school that will slowly turn back to the
greyness of my own, a question is racking my brain. Is Heartstopper
just a fantasy or a reflection of where we are now?

“I don’t know because I think it varies so much,” replies
Oseman. “When I was at school, it was nothing like Heartstopper,
obviously. But having been an author of teen fiction, I’ve met a lot
of teenagers … who clearly have had quite an accepting upbringing in
their school environment that feels worlds away from what my school
life was like.

“Heartstopper is, of course, more accepting, aspirational and what
we wish all schools and queer experiences could be like.”

That’s the thing about this show. Whatever the world we live in,
it gives you hope.

_Heartstopper is on Netflix from __3 October__._

* LGBTQ youth
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* Heartstopper
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* NETFLIX
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