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, 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’s drive to match the lively visuals of the graphic novels the 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. “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.
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 by fans. The 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.
“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.”
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.
