Kit Connor has criticised his viral Heartstopper scene with Hayley Atwell.
The 20-year-old actor who rose to fame as secondary school student Nick Nelson in the Netflix teen series has reflected on filming a widely-circulated Heartstopper scene that sees his character confide in his aunt (played by Marvel star Hayley Attwell) about his boyfriend Charlie’s eating disorder.
In the scene, Connor’s character, who is 16 at the time, opens up to his aunt after he’s been struggling to support his boyfriend whose mental health is deteriorating. Nick has been single-handedly trying to manage Charlie’s eating issue without telling their friends or parents.
Attwell’s character comforts Kit and gives him a piece of crucial advice, telling him that he can’t carry another person’s burden to rescue them – and that he should ask for help.
When speaking about the scene in an interview withTeen Vogue, Connor, who doesn’t use social media, was shocked to find out the moment had gone viral online because he thought his performance wasn’t very good.
“Has it been circulating?” Connor asked the interviewer.
The actor explained the scene was difficult to film, because they only had an hour to shoot it, and he was surprised people liked it.
“Hayley did really beautifully in that scene. Really. That was a hard scene to film because we had an hour to shoot it. And it’s not short,” he said.
“I was really worried about it to be honest… But I’m glad that people like it. I tried to watch it and I was like, I’m not very good in this scene.”
The release of Heartstopper’s third season coincidences with Connor’s broadway debut, which sees him play Romeo in a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet alongside West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler.
Directed by Tony-winner Sam Gold (Fun Home) and featuring music by Grammy-winner Jack Antonoff, the new production aims to cater to a younger generation.
Connor will be following in the footsteps of his Heartstopper co-star Joe Locke, who also made his Broadway debut this February, starring in Hadestown.
Speaking about joining Heartstopper in 2022, Connor reflected on becoming famous in his teens and beginning to care about other people’s opinions of him.
“Heartstopper came out when I still kind of hadn’t finished puberty. I wasn’t done yet. I wasn’t fully cooked. People had never looked at me in the way that they started looking at me. And I had never led a show before,” he told Teen Vogue. “I’d never led a project really before. I was a child actor. No one was like, that’s a good performance. It’s like, oh yeah, he’s a kid. He did all right. He said the lines. He got them out. I cared a lot about the opinions of strangers and that’s a dangerous place to be.”
