Let me just say that no one hates Ben Hope more than the actor for Ben Hope, Sebastian Croft. Ajayi, is out in a way where he can be there for Charlie, always wearing a Pride pin to school every day and can always willing to give him advice.Īnd yes, there are even characters like Ben Hope, the boy who was messing around with Charlie in secret who says he’s not gay, he just felt bad for Charlie, but also he’s mad that Charlie’s interested in someone else. We also get the sense that, for Elle, this is a better, brand new start, as she’s attending Higgs (an all-girls school) instead of Truman (an all-boys school). Darcy has been out for a while and Tara is just now coming out to her classmates and on social media. Charlie has known he was gay since he was young, whereas Nick is just beginning to explore his sexuality. We sought those spaces out and connected with each other.Įveryone is at different points in their journeyĪlong with having a cast of multiple queer characters, those characters are at different points in their lives when it comes to their queer identity. That’s because we met in spaces where we felt like we belonged. To be honest, a lot of my friends are queer, or POC, or queer POC.
That’s a closer representation of what my friend group looks like than the “there can be only one” marginalized narrative I grew up with. Two of the kids are Black (Tara and Elle) and one kid is Asian (Tao). The milkshake table has a gay boy (Charlie), a boy who would go on to come out as bisexual (Nick), two lesbians (Tara and Darcy), and a transgender girl (Elle). There’s a scene in Heartstopper where six of the kids get together for milkshakes, and out of those six, five of the kids are queer. That mindset always frustrated me because, in reality, we find each other and look for spaces that aim to make us feel comfortable, not excluded. Throughout my years of talking about a desire for more variety in queer representation, I remember hearing comments about how “unrealistic” a queer story would be if most (or all) of the cast were a part of the LGBTQ community. There is so much diversity in the queer community