SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This interview was conducted prior to the strike.
“Are You OK?” Yasmin Finney yells, slowing down to check that I’m all right. We’re at Flipper’s, a roller rink in London, and while the young actor is zipping around with grace and blithe finesse, I’ve already fallen over spectacularly. Twice.
Flipper’s looks like the kind of place you’d see in Pose or Halston: set up to evoke a trendy New York warehouse nightclub, there is neon lighting everywhere. Two mega-speakers pump out an eclectic mix of Teenage Dream-era Katy Perry and The Weeknd, so we’re hollering instead of using our inside voices. “N’owt but a bruised ego,” I say, trying to match Finney’s breezy cool, which is hard when you’re on your arse.
It’s the first time Finney has been roller skating since she was 15, growing up in Manchester, when she picked it up as an unusual hobby – a way to get back at the bullies. The years hardly show: nobody here can keep up with her, except perhaps the burly instructor doing pirouettes in the middle of the rink. Finney herself has never fallen, she explains; it just seems to come naturally. Then she’s gone, racing off between the circuiting patrons.
You’ll know Finney best as Elle Argent, one of the precocious foursome who make up the main ensemble of Netflix hit Heartstopper, based on the YA graphic novels by Alice Oseman. In a queer romance genre that historically leans towards tragedy and heartbreak, Heartstopper is a revelation: a progressive fairytale about two teens (portrayed by Kit Connor and Joe Locke) falling in love in an all-boys school. That Elle is trans, mentioned once in a throwaway line in the series pilot, is refreshingly treated as incidental.
This is a fantasy, alas, hardly afforded to trans people in the real world, wherein once-beloved celebrities and opportunistic politicians alike have embraced anti-trans dogma as the latest right-wing crusade. Time magazine might have optimistically announced trans liberation to be “America’s next civil rights frontier” in 2014, with Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox chosen as the first out trans cover subject, but the march of equality has since been met by huge new challenges on each side of the Atlantic. In the US, Republican state legislators have proposed and passed swathes of anti-trans bills, primarily targeting gender-affirming healthcare and trans athletes. In the UK, the rights of trans people are contested on a daily basis by a hostile press; they’re now prime targets in the quote-unquote culture war cynically stoked by tabloids and politicians alike.
“You’re still surviving but you’re like prey, you know,” Finney says, after we’ve escaped the perils of the rink in favour of slushies in the diner-style bar. “You’ve always got to be ready for the next thing, because trans people are always used as the topic of conversation with everything.”
It’s a sad reality of the conversation around trans lives in the present moment that Finney is expected to be a demographic spokesperson – even at 19. It’s a lot of weight to throw on the shoulders of a teen still grappling with her own sense of self, but Finney has taken it on admirably. Take her defiant speech at Trans+ Pride last summer, just months after the Heartstopper crew shot to household-name status. “Boris, I hope you see Heartstopper,” she shouted, calling out the then-PM. “Because I exist. And I know you know I exist. We all exist. And we’re not going anywhere. Period.”
This is something that returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies, who cast Finney in the show’s upcoming anniversary specials, admires about her. “I’ve seen it at the Attitude awards – people will form a queue to speak to her. Parents of trans children, trans people themselves,” Davies says. “That’s a heavy responsibility for a 19-year-old. When I saw footage of her at Pride, standing in the middle of a crowd with her fist up, I was awestruck. I think of what I was like at 19… It’s not that I wouldn’t have had the words – I wouldn’t have had the gumption.”
Her Heartstopper co-star William Gao concurs. “I admire her ambition and courage,” he says. “She warmly embraces her newly found position as a pioneer for trans visibility, which is what our industry needs.”
Sometimes, understandably, Davies worries. “I hope she always has the chance to say ‘No’. You don’t have to make a speech, you don’t have to campaign,” he says. “But she seems to be handling all of it brilliantly.”
That Finney is trans is but one facet of her identity, after all. Does she get tired of talking about it? “It’s not that, it’s just like – I keep talking about it, but I wish there was change, and there’s just no change,” she says. “Obviously I’m only 19 but I have a lot more I need to do. People look at my life now and think I’ve hit the top, but I’ve not yet, because I’m still being ridiculed and my community is still being attacked for being who they are. It’s a sad world we live in. But I live a very privileged life compared to 90 per cent of my community. I realise that.”
Finney has been thinking about her childhood a lot recently. She grew up on a council estate in Trafford, Manchester, living with her mum and her half-sister. Money was hard to come by, so she couldn’t go on school trips, and relied on free school meals. “I had to get a blazer that was 10 times my size because my mum didn’t want to pay for a blazer that fitted me,” Finney says. “I was that kid who would come in with baggy everything, and eventually I’d grow into it.” At school, other kids relentlessly bullied her for being flamboyant, meaning they hated how ‘other’ she was – the timeworn coming-of-age tale for queer and trans people alike. Imagine the shock reverberating around the school dinner hall when one day, she came in wearing a skirt. “It wasn’t planned, it was kind of spontaneous,” she remembers. “That was a moment.”
Such were her family’s circumstances that before Heartstopper, Finney had only been abroad once. Since the show came out, she has completed an international tour, from Paris to New York, enjoying bougie holidays and fashion events between endless reams of press. “I had this mindset of wanting the opposite of what I had growing up,” she says. “This luxurious life with money and success. All of it.”
The image she paints of her familial background, otherwise, is as complicated as any. She doesn’t speak to the lion’s share of her extended family, she says, though she’s close to her mother. “It’s been a rocky journey, but eventually she accepted me, and accepts me.” Finney says. “My family are very Catholic, so they have a ‘one rule for all’ situation, and I kind of just broke from that, as did my mum. I feel like my family lives this life of being cautious of everything; if anything was slightly out of place, too this, too that, they’d hate that.” After Finney transitioned, it took her mum “a while” to get used to her new gender identity, but now, “it’s like I was never born male to her.”
She has never met her father. “I don’t know much about my dad. It’s an ongoing mystery,” she says. Does she think about him? “Yeah, for sure. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. I’ve been surrounded by empowered Black women my whole life,” she says. “Do you even need a dad? Look where I am without one.”
Finney displays little of the artificial humility that you might expect in young stars, but is obligated by rigid Britishness – bowing to luck and fortune, rather than celebrating one’s own talent. Finney always knew she’d make it. “I didn’t plan my life, the universe just kind of brought what it needed to bring me. Which sounds crazy,” Finney says. “I don’t even know how to explain it, but there’s always been a presence anyway, that’s looking over me. And that’s – I don’t know if it’s God.” She laughs. “There’s always been something that’s there, by my side.”
Finney is so unfazed. All of it seems effortless. When she talks about flying around the world to attend fashion weeks, or taking on the second series of Heartstopper, or Doctor Who, or trips sponsored by luxury brands, it’s with the poise of a seasoned pro, not the overwhelmed timidity you might expect of a teenager. “I think the effortlessness comes from everything I’ve been through,” she says. “I’ve been through things that a 19-year-old shouldn’t have been through.”
Separating after the interview, I look back and see Finney chatting to one of the rink attendants, an older Black woman. They speak like they’ve met a million times before, grinning all the while, sharing a warm parting embrace. The older woman seems to glow.
Finney and I talk again on Zoom a week later. She’s in her new home, a flat in South-West London, joined on screen by her chocolate Pomeranian “daughter” named Coco. The little fluffy dog perches on Finney’s lap with an expression of befuddlement. (Coco, of course, later joins Finney at her GQ cover shoot.) To Finney’s right, just above her shoulder, is a framed print of her recent Vogue cover.
She’s just returned from a trip to Marrakesh with Saint Laurent. She stayed at La Mamounia, which she describes as the “best hotel in Morocco.” She recalls the trip with wondrous excitement, regaling me with the incredible sights. Rich scents leap into memory, as if her olfactory system is triggered afresh. She reverently recalls the “elegant, gorgeous garments” she wore, covering her shoulders and knees, being in a Muslim country. She muses on the glamour; so too the poverty she witnessed outside the hotel walls, of a different kind than she saw growing up in Manchester.
Finney has a voracious appetite for new adventures, new cultures. I get the sense that, now equipped with the tools to explore the world, she’s making up for lost time. “I should have had these experiences when I was younger, but I didn’t. And I’m giving them to myself now,” she says, perhaps for a second forgetting that she is only 19.
None of this, however, comes without a level of trepidation. “Everywhere I go, I always have this fear of, like, Oh my god, me being trans is gonna be this thing. But when I’m there, I just don’t really want to leave.” When she went to New York, she was “scared shitless,” having read about rising anti-trans violence in America. “And [by] the very last day, I was like, Oh my god, I love New York.”
Transphobia isn’t a uniquely American malaise. How does she feel in London? “London’s really nothing to me. I’m not scared at any point when I walk on the street. Every time I come back, it’s like, London, I’ve mastered it,” she says. “It’s not something that fazes me at all.” Finney has bigger aspirations: she wants to see the entire world. “I’m not gonna be staying [in London] for the rest of my life. I’m going to be moving around the country, and hopefully doing projects in different countries, and embracing different cultures, and learning… Travelling has given me such an insight into [cultural differences], and that alone is wisdom. And wisdom is power.”
Series two of Heartstopper, which completed filming in December, is set to hit Netflix in August. Straight after that will come Finney’s closely guarded role in Doctor Who, in which she’ll play Rose, the legacy sci-fi series’ first major openly trans character. (At the time of writing, her relationship to the Rose portrayed by Billie Piper in the late 2000s is unknown.) “I remember at one of my first birthday parties, somebody got me, like, Doctor Who playing cards. They had Daleks on them; David Tennant. And I was so happy. Fast-forward nine years, or something, and I’m here on the show.” She speaks glowingly about Davies, calling him one of the “wisest men” she’s met. “You know what, he’s always been ahead of his time. Always. And that’s something that I see in myself, and I see reflected in his writing. I see the power he holds with every word.”
She’s tight-lipped on the plot specifics – as mentioned, she’s a scarily proper pro – but offers a morsel of a tease. “Get ready, because it really is a throwback.”
Finney was recruited for Heartstopper straight from college. She had no formal drama training, which she feels helped her maintain a certain authenticity; at the same time, she admits she’s learned a lot about acting since shooting the first series. “I had less experience than other people on the cast. I wanted to do so much more than I did. Being harsh on myself, if I knew what I know now, I would’ve done something different,” she says. “Obviously I’m my harshest critique,” she continues, with a faux French flourish. “But I gave myself credit, you know. I did well for a 17-year-old Black trans girl.”
Gao certainly noticed a difference while filming the second series. “I think Yas got more playful with the scenes we did in season two, especially following Tao and Elle’s story,” he writes. “She switched things up more, which aided the scenes and our on-screen chemistry.”
Finney recognises that she is far from the finished product. “You’ve always got to make sure that you’re just as good as the next person,” she says, “and that you can tell a story, and tell a story [that’s] different to who you are.” That means pushing herself past replicating her lived experience on screen; portraying cisgender characters, if the gatekeepers will allow it. One of the injustices of Hollywood is that while cis actors have historically been showered with accolades when they play trans, trans actors are almost never cast as cis. “You know, the Oscars,” Finney says. “People love the trans experience.”
Nevertheless, there’s not an ounce of imposter syndrome in these bones. When she talks about the film and TV business, it’s a space in need of a zhuzh, and she’s the one to deliver it. “This is an industry that needs me,” she says.
That’s what is so intoxicating about Finney; her radical confidence in the face of all this. At a time when hostility towards the trans community feels like it’s at an all-time high, here is this self-assured teenager showing what change actually looks like, creating art that shows what her experience should look like. If the success of Heartstopper proves anything, it’s the endless power of making marginalised people seen, and feel seen.
“There’s always room for change, and change is going to happen no matter what,” Finney says. “Maybe, instead of fighting change – destroying it – you can learn something from it. Maybe you can take something from it.”
Perhaps confidence is the wrong word. Perhaps a better word is bravery. As we say our goodbyes, I’m left to ponder on an anecdote Finney had told me at the roller rink. She was on holiday with some friends just after filming had wrapped on Heartstopper. Finney had never learned how to swim, but she wanted to teach herself, so late one night on a yacht off the coast of Cyprus, she leapt into the sea.
Suffice to say, so inexperienced was Finney in any body of water – let alone the open sea – she struggled; in another situation, she might have drowned. But her friends were with her in the water and came to help, lifting her head above the froth. After a moment, she gained control, and was able to take in her surroundings, floating on the water. It was pitch black, she said, save for the brightness of the moon, which shimmered on the glassy surface below.
“I nearly died that night,” Finney told me. “But I realised your body has balance, and you’ve just got to breathe.”
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Photographs by Jenny Brough
Styling by Oliver Volquardsen
Hair by Issac Poleon
Makeup by Mona Leanne using YSL Beauty
Nails by Simone Cummings
Set design by King Owusu
Movement director, Benjamin Jonsson
See Yasmin Finney at GQ Heroes in Oxfordshire, from 19-21 July, in association with BMW UK. For more info and tickets, visit GQHeroes.com