Okay, I’m Gonna Talk More In Depth About The Kit Connor Situation - By Not Talking About Him.

Okay, I’m gonna talk more in depth about the Kit Connor situation - by not talking about him.

I am seriously tired of people putting so much onus on actors’ shoulders. I understand that for many people, especially those who don’t understand the process of filmmaking, actors are the face of the project. To them they represent the story. And it’s true that actors are very important to stories! But frankly I think we as a society give them more credit than they are due. Sometimes this is for their benefit (high-profile actors being paid millions while half the crew could never afford a mortgage) and other times like in the case of Kit’s private life being invaded it is decidedly not.

You know who I haven’t seen people talk much about? Euros Lynn, who directed all eight episodes of Heartstopper. Who not only is responsible for getting the performances out of our actors, but also collaborates across all departments to ensure consistency of vision. Euros Lynn, who is gay and married to a man.

Excerpt from an interview with Euros:

“It’s a proud celebration of how wholesome and pure-hearted queer love can be, and how love can be, because love is love across any sexuality,” Lyn says. “It’s really uplifting to work on a show like this, but that’s not to negate the fact that lots of queer stories have complexity in them and have nuance and are about transgression. Lots of the complicated experiences of being queer are equally valid. It’s just wonderful to have something like [Heartstopper] as part of our canon of queer stories that is just a positive, wholesome celebration. Even in this show we don’t shy away from the darker side of homophobic bullying in school, and Charlie has his own demons that he’s dealing with alongside problems with self-worth. Nick has to come out and discover that he’s a person who is different to the world around him, and then Darcy and Tara have their own challenges. All our characters have obstacles they need to overcome and not everything is utopian and perfect. And yet, beneath it all is this overwhelming sense of hope and joy.”

“I was a teenager growing up in the 1980s which was a time when the government introduced a law called Section 28 which banned the promotion of homosexuality in education or public life, and it really set the tone for those years,” Lyn recalls. “I remember feeling very ashamed of being gay, and I didn’t come out until I was in my 20s, so I didn’t have what Nick and Charlie had until I was a little older. Watching the show or reading the script I didn’t feel sad, I didn’t feel grief for what I didn’t have, I just felt joy for them. It really makes me happy that there are teenagers now who can be out in school, who can fall in love, and whose traumas are normal teenage traumas like, ‘Will that person fancy me back? Oh my god do they think I’m ugly? Do they think I’m beautiful?’ and just the normal traumas of being a teenager, rather than the trauma of suppressing your sexuality or not."

What about Patrick Walters, executive producer, who can be spotted on set with Alice in many of Toby’s blogs, who was responsible for guiding Alice through the journey of taking this story from comics to film?

Let’s hear what Patrick has to say:

“I self-identified with ‘Charlie’. I thought, ‘He’s just like me. I was that sort of slightly anxious, dark, curly-haired 17 year old who was constantly overthinking, and quite shy..’ But I also knew who I was in some ways,

I showed her [Alice] that picture and I was like, ‘I love Charlie Spring and I feel memories of my teenage years are in this character, and it would just be such a joy to go on this journey with you!’

Heartstopper is the first of my shows to get picked up and be made and it’s just been the most joyful, life-changing process. I feel so incredibly lucky, I can’t tell you. I love the graphic novels it’s based on so much. I’m a gay man with feelings of wanting to be represented in the TV shows that I see. So when I first read the graphic novel as it was published, I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this before. This is so emotional. It’s about young gay love and I feel so happy having read it,’”

I’m a gay man, but I feel such kinship with trans people, bisexual people, asexual people and that sense of family and belonging is super-important and super-meaningful. It should be celebrated. It’s not that we’re all just banded together. We’re not box-ticking. There’s a friendship and intimacy and acceptance, that straight people don’t have. I love being part of the LGBTQ+ family and I think if Heartstopper can show young audiences ‘Hey, this isn’t something to stress about… I might be gay, I might be bi, I might be this….’ it’s a journey that you take your own pace,

“You do it however you want to do it, but all around you, you’ll have like a family of people cheering you on and it’ll be okay. It’ll be more than okay. It’ll be fun. Exciting.

“I think that’s the message in Heartstopper that feels different and groundbreaking.”

So if you’re someone who’s fixating so much on the actors’ sexuality, I ask you - is it because you want conscientious representation, or are you just fixating on the actor too much and expecting them to be exactly like their character? This is a show created by queer people. The people who created this show understand what is important, and are dedicated to bringing these experiences to life. They are talking about it in interviews and are excited to share their stories…

…so why are people harassing a teenage actor over his sexuality and calling that “activism”?