Heartstopper Deepdives

New Kit Connor interview!

Added 2024-09-01 00:33:52 +0000 UTC

Since it's behind a paywall, here are the Heartstopper related quotes for you:

Connor started as a child actor — in Get Santa, His Dark Materials and as the young Elton John in Rocketman — so his parents, who both work in advertising, were always with him. Then at 17 he was cast as Nick, the co-lead in the adaptation of Heartstopper, Alice Oseman’s wildly popular (more than eight million books sold in 38 countries worldwide) graphic novel series. The role has made him a household name with tweens and teens.

The show — a cultural phenomenon that started in 2022 as a rose-tinted PG version of young queer love at secondary school, where hand-holding and the occasional kiss was as steamy as it got — has matured with him. Having become a Netflix Top Ten hit in 54 countries, it has captured the hearts of wide-eyed Gen Alpha and Zers and cynical boomers alike with its feelgood storylines. Series three is now upon us and, like Connor, it’s all grown-up. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve outgrown the show because the show is growing in itself,” he says. Most of the cast, who have ridden the wave of Heartstopper’s success to land beauty contracts and ad campaigns, are in their early twenties now. They are quite obviously busting out of their school uniforms as they play sixth-formers thinking about university and navigating first sexual experiences.

His closeness with his co-star Joe Locke made the intimate scenes in the latest shows easier. They have worked with the same intimacy co-ordinator since the first series. “We’ve been taking baby steps,” he says. “Season one, he would be there making sure that we were comfortable holding hands. And now we’re doing the sex scenes. We shot a lot of footage for them. Not much actually ended up in the show. But we shot the sex scenes for about seven hours!” What did he do at the end of that day? “Same as every day filming — pile into someone’s apartment, as we were living in the same complex, and just collapse on the sofa. If someone was finishing a bit earlier, they would cook or we’d get a delivery — it was lovely.”