I’d hope that as millennials are starting to have children and bring their children up, that will start to change things. I know from my own experience that that makes some things a bit difficult. “Difference is seen as a bad thing in a lot of schools and to other teenagers because you don’t fit in with a certain norm that’s seen to be acceptable. “A lot has changed in recent years but there’s still a long way to go,” he says. The word “gay” is still used as an insult. Older viewers might presume that the school playground is a place of acceptance and inclusivity in 2022, but Locke says otherwise. “I sent in a self-tape and got a Zoom recall, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s strange.’ I did another Zoom recall and then another, and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe this might actually happen.’ I’d always wanted to be an actor but, being from the Isle of Man, it’s even harder when you don’t have access to the same sort of generic route lots of young actors would have in the UK: going to acting schools where they bring in agents or doing theatre auditions at the weekend for the West End.” Instead, Locke was a big part of the local amateur dramatics scene, and would spend most of his summers performing in the “really lovely old Victorian theatre” in his town.
“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 a viral tweet earlier this month, one fan posted pictures of Locke and 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 (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. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.Joe Locke doesn’t do nonchalance. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers
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