“When I first read Heartstopper, I had actually just finished watching It’s a Sin,” he says.
Luigi, an 18-year-old from London who runs a also runs fan page dedicated to the comic on Twitter, agrees. Kit Connor as Nick and Joe Locke as Charlie (Photo: Netflix) “I think discovering yourself with stories like Heartstopper is a nice way to understand yourself.” “There is a lot of representation for older queer people but not teenagers,” she says. Through the series, she has found a community of people who have found much needed representation in Oseman’s work. Nina, an 18-year-old fan from Brazil, is a co-owner of one of the largest Heartstopper fan pages on Instagram. The first graphic novel, published in 2019, has sold over a million copies.
It originated as a comic series on blogging platform Tumblr in 2016 and has since amassed over over 52.1 million views. It’s this very approach that has turned Oseman’s creation into a global phenomenon.
Instead, Walters wanted to “deliver a piece of queer representation that felt joyful, young and completely free of shame”. While Heartstopper touches on coming out, it is not just another queer teen drama about people struggling with their sexuality. “It was a love story that really touched me and that is a rare thing.” “It was just refreshing in how emotional it was,” Walters says.
Its creation was a joint effort with excecutive producer Patrick Walters who read the comic in 2018 and fell in love. Oseman was involved on an almost granular level with the adaptation from development to writing all the scripts. Instead, these teens go bowling, partake in school activities, party without alcohol and, most shocking of all, confide in their parents. Unlike the extreme teenage debauchery of Euphoria, Heartstopper offers a non-threatening portrait of adolescence, one in which its characters aren’t found necking beers, smoking cigarettes, bonking everything that moves or dabbling in narcotics. I’m not sure it’s ever been done to this extent before.” It can be watched by kids who are 10 or 11. They have sex in them, swearing and drinking. “I think a lot of queer stories in teen shows are more adult. “We wanted it to be a queer story that young people could watch, either by themselves or with their families,” says Oseman. Excitingly, Olivia Colman plays Nick’s mother, a secret that was kept quiet even from the cast. His friendship group is made up of LGBTQ+ people, such as lesbian couple Darcy (Kizzy Edgell) and Tara (Corinna Brown), and trans teenager Elle (Yasmin Finney), who shares a flirtation with Tao (William Gao), the only cisgender, hetrosexual person in the gang. It follows Charlie (Joe Locke), an out gay teen, and his burgeoning relationship with Nick (Kit Connor), a rugby player who is unsure about his sexuality.
TV has always honed in on the teenage experience to various degrees of authenticity, angst and explicitness, but Heartstopper is a different breed of teen drama: one crafted specifically for a young LGBTQ+ audience. Based on the popular web comic and graphic novel series by British writer Alice Oseman, it’s a queer coming-of-age drama about first love and finding yourself as a teenager. If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the .uk entertainment team by emailing us calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.Netflix’s Heartstopper might just be the boldest TV show of 2022.
Heartstopper can be streamed in full on Netflix now and This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV. ‘I was on my own and my agent phoned me and said you got the job, it was just me in my house with the dog – I screamed very loudly!’ Sick fertility doctor used own sperm to father 94 children by impregnating patientsīut Joe was on his own when he received the news due to having to isolate, adding: I’m from the Isle of Man and it was during Covid last year, I had to fly to London for an audition and fly home and isolate on my own for two weeks.