Kit Connor peers at his reflection. Strictly speaking, he’s looking at a selfie he took only seconds ago. It preserves him in this moment, the calm before the storm; Heartstopper season 2 is right around the corner.
“I’ll tell you what I see,” Connor tells Teen Vogue. “I see a young man who’s excited.” (He also sees a young man with hair that’s “somehow falling in quite a nice little way,” with strands draping over his forehead, but that’s beside the point). “I feel like we got what we wanted, and what we wanted to make.”
The 19-year-old actor is this month’s Teen Vogue cover star alongside Joe Locke, Connor’s co-star in Heartstopper, the British YA romance series based on Alice Oseman’s webcomics, which released its second season on August 3.
By the time he arrives on Zoom for our interview in late June, Connor has seen the entirety of season 2 of Heartstopper. He doesn’t enjoy watching himself on-screen, and he was nervous going into it, but he’s content with the end product. “There were a lot more scenes where it was just a lot of people and a lot of things going on and a lot of plates to be spun,” he says. “As a cast we really felt that. We felt the difference in terms of what we were trying to achieve,” compared to season 1, which was less ambitious and didn’t have a trip to Paris as the mid-season centerpiece. “Watching it and being happy with what we all did was even better because it felt like that little bit of struggle that we had in season 2 really was worth it.”
Connor found the Spring-Nelson dinner especially difficult to shoot. “We spent the whole day doing it, it was quite long and a little bit wordy, and just lots of angles.” He spent a lot of time living in Nick’s mind, crafting his dynamic with brother David and dad Stéphane. “David is homophobic, but the idea he was just born a homophobe or something is just not true,” Connor said in the show’s press notes. Originally, Connor felt that Nick might be aware of David’s jealousy that Nick is the “golden boy in the family,” and that’s why he takes it out on him. But “it’s important to remember that Nick is still a teenager and might not have all the answers,” he says. (The same can be said for Connor himself).
He points to a moment at the end of episode 7, when Stéphane leaves. “Call me when you get back to Edinburgh,” Stéphane says. David corrects him: “Glasgow,” which is close, but not close enough. It speaks to how uninvolved he is, and it’s where Connor thinks Nick might have realized that David’s behavior is not as simple as “Oh, David doesn’t like me.” There’s something more.
Then, of course, we come to the final scene of season 2, between Nick and Charlie, “one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful scenes that Alice has ever written,” Connor says. He really didn’t want to get it wrong. Nick sits Charlie down for an honest conversation, where Charlie opens up about the true extent of his bullying and how far it pushed him. It was shot over an emotionally-draining seven hour period; figuring out where to pitch it and running it again and again.
“It really just hits you when you’re down I think, but also brings you right back at the end,” Connor says. “With that scene, with my relationship with Joe, who I love dearly, we've shared so many experiences that have made us who we are.” It gave playing the scene a certain ease and comfort. “With a scene like that it's impossible to really know how to do it. You just kind of have to jump in, and we did and we tried it and tried to see what felt right and I was pretty happy with what came out.”
He likens it to Nick’s coming out scene at the end of season 1. “There was so much humanity in there,” Connor says. “Being with someone that you love and care about and having them telling you something and being vulnerable, and basically just learning where and how to support them as best you can.”
In Connor’s Teen Vogue cover story, he talks about how his co-stars help neutralize overwhelming online attention. He says further: “One thing that we use as a sort of coping mechanism for everything on the Heartstopper set is humor and sarcasm and taking the mick out of each other. We try to just defuse it, make things easier, make things better… it's all about reminding ourselves that life goes on and we're gonna get through it and we're all doing it together.” (On set last November, Joe Locke adds, “We’re definitely like a family in that sense. Always there for each other, but also always the most mean to each other.”)
Through all of the pressures that come with being a public figure, Connor lives as much of a regular life as he can. He leans on his gym training, which is documented in a YouTube video with over 918,000 views at time of writing. It gives him two hours a day to “chill and blow off steam… just forget about things,” vibe to good music and live in his own head. He prefers dumbbells over barbells, but the gym isn’t about progressing and beating a P.B. for Connor, at least not anymore. It’s a routine, a way to center himself.
Connor says he has “no clue” what he’s doing. But that’s true to life, whether it’s lived on-screen or in the real world. You can think you know everything, but the world will constantly prove that you know nothing. “It does have a tendency to do that, doesn’t it?” Connor says. “You thought you knew how things are supposed to work? No. You don’t.”
Heartstopper is now streaming on Netflix.