“It was an open casting call so I didn’t have an agent or anything and I hadn’t done anything professional before,” he says. Locke – who grew up in the Isle of Man, the son of a schoolteacher mother and newsagent father – doesn’t like to think about the fact he beat 10,000 people to the role “because that seems really scary”. Oseman was determined to lend the show an air of verisimilitude, with each casting call restricted to the exact sexual identity and ethnicity of the characters in her web comic. And his fidgety awkwardness on the sports field seeps through the screen. His whole face lights up when he sees Nick. Locke deftly offsets Charlie’s puppyish hopefulness with vulnerability. In Heartstopper, illustrations of flowers, stars, lighting bolts and fireworks whizz around the screen when Charlie and Nick touch. But it also explores the fizzing excitement you feel when a person you fancy DMs you, the electric rush that zings through you when your crush’s hand brushes your own. The show doesn’t shy away from the painful experiences many queer teenagers have – Charlie both hooks up with and is bullied by Ben Hope (Sebastian Croft), a popular boy who has a girlfriend and refuses to acknowledge Charlie in public. And so Heartstopper is so lovely in that it gives that to queer characters.”
I think a lot of queer people growing up feel like they don’t deserve love, because they don’t have access to the same dating pool or support as straight people do. It shows the really nice things about being queer. “There are opposites in our story,” says 18-year-old Locke over video call from a friend’s house in London. Wearing an appropriately wholesome patterned woolly jumper, he has a shock of black curly hair and a powerful pair of eyebrows. “Our story is not so based on sex, because our characters are turning 15 and 16 in the series, so it’s more about relationships and love. It’s already been dubbed the “anti- Euphoria”, swapping drugs and sex for milkshakes and snow angels. It is, as Locke puts it, “a beautiful story of acceptance and love and friendship and happiness”. Heartstopper bursts with butterflies-in-the-tummy optimism. In a viral tweet earlier this month, one fan posted pictures of Locke and O’Connor next to their illustrated characters, writing: “ Heartstopper casting department definitely understood the assignment.” They have shared their heartache, their joy. But long before Heartstopper came to Netflix, it already had hundreds of thousands of adoring fans. The show – about two schoolboys, Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson (O’Connor), who fall in love – is based on a young-adult web comic created by Alice Oseman, who has adapted her stories for television. Masses of teens already know Charlie and Nick inside-out. It’s not typical for an unknown actor to gain so much attention before their show has even aired (the day before Heartstopper is out, Locke has 188,000 followers).
Then we were on set one day and Kit whispered it to me and I started screaming.” On the day his own casting was announced in the press, Locke went from 1,000 Instagram followers to 15,000. Then he was like, ‘You got it.’ And I just screamed again.” A few months later, during filming, Locke discovered that Olivia Colman was the mystery star who’d joined the cast of mostly newcomers. “They kept her a secret for ages. I knew he wouldn’t have asked if I was sitting down if I hadn’t got it. “He goes, ‘Are you sat down?’ And I just screamed. “I had a phone call from my agent,” Locke tells me. When the lead star of Netflix’s fizzing new hit drama, Heartstopper, discovered he had been selected out of 10,000 teenagers to play schoolboy Charlie Spring, he let out a high-pitched yelp.