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A bit of an update for everybody today, courtesy of British GQ! They sat down with Kit and Joe for a new interview and had them react to a selection of scenes from the first season of Heartstopper; UHD captures from the latter have also have been added to the gallery.
A year ago, Joe Locke and Kit Connor were kids preparing for their exams. Now, courtesy of Netflix’s breakthrough queer sensation Heartstopper, they are reckoning with suddenly being stop–you–in–the street, internet–boyfriend famous.
It’s afternoon at Rowan’s, a bowling alley and arcade in North London. The kind of place where the floors are sticky and the fizzy cola never quite tastes right. As most grown adults are wallowing in hungover states, two of the most famous young men in the country – Joe Locke and Kit Connor, the stars of Netflix’s Heartstopper – are here surrounded by kids’ birthday parties. It’s the closest they now get to incognito, since almost no one their age is kicking around. But while the boys are distracted shooting hoops, playfully competing against each other, a stray teenager spots them and whispers into her mum’s ear.
I wonder what she says. How she tries to summarise the sheer power of Heartstopper, the show that changed the pair’s lives and deeply affected many of the millions who watched it. How she describes these two men who, a year ago, enjoyed their respective normalities: studying for their GCSEs, living at home with their parents, preparing for the release of a queer TV show many – including Netflix – thought would pass by on the cultural calendar as nothing but a mild, if important arrhythmic blip.
