The dress code at the world premiere of Heartstopper Forever in London’s Leicester Square on Tuesday night? “Your best self —however that looks to you.”
That was the guidance from Netflix in the lead-up to the star-studded event, which had Kit Connor, Joe Locke and Alice Oseman on the carpet, greeting fans and talking to press at the Cineworld theater.
The event began with an interactive quiz for attendees, who were probed on their Heartstopper trivia. “What is Nick’s brother’s name?” and “Where was Nick and Charlie’s first holiday together?” were among the questions, read out by internet personality and BookTok star Jack Edwards.
The film, the conclusive ending to the three Heartstopper seasons adapted from Alice Oseman’s graphic novel, is set to follow Charlie (Locke) and Nick (Connor)’s biggest relationship hurdle yet. They’re on the precipice of change —unable to imagine life without each other —but Nick is heading off to university. Charlie finds new independence at school in his absence, and the long-distance relationship begins to weigh on them.
At the end of the screening, the two lead stars and Oseman were hosted for a short Q&A, where Connor explained that he actually revelled in getting to contradict Nick’s usually buoyant personality in this film. “It’s very moving to be in the room with everyone,” the Warfare star began. “It’s worth saying that a lot of it was there in the writing and the characters that Alice has built over the comics and also over the last three seasons.”
“I was trying to use that to my advantage in the sense that we’ve seen this character in the first two seasons be a ray of sunshine and this golden light —an answer to a lot of the problems — so for the audience to see this character go up against these kinds of issues and these kinds of things [I thought] would do a lot of the work for me. To be honest,” he continued, “it would just be such a sort of contradiction and such a shock for people to see going through these things, so I was just trying to ride that wave.”
Locke replied when asked what he’ll miss most about the Heartstopper franchise: “The people, for me. We create such amazing bonds in the show, with the cast and the crew. It’s more than friendship — it’s like a family. I think Tao [William Gao’s character] says it, ‘We might go in and out of each other’s lives, but we’ll always be bonded together,’ which is really nice.” Connor chimed in: “I absolutely agree. That’s what I was going to say.”
The group also joked about the comparative raciness of this instalment compared to the TV series, with Locke saying about the enormous Cineworld screen: “The screen is so big… My mum is here watching me get a blowjob onscreen.”
Both of them spoke on the media line about the need to depict young, queer relationships as honestly and organically as possible, which includes Charlie and Nick exploring intimacy even further in Heartstopper Forever.
Heartstopper is one of Netflix’s most popular shows and launched the careers of Locke and Connor, as well as cast members such as Yasmin Finney, William Gao, Rhea Norwood, Corinna Brown, and Sebastian Croft. A huge majority of the cast made an appearance at Tuesday night’s premiere, as well as their co-stars Tobie Donovan, Kizzy Edgell, Jenny Walser, Fisayo Akinade, Nima Taleghani, Leila Khan, Bradley Riches, Darragh Hand, andBel Priestley.
Oseman wrote the finale film. Wash Westmoreland directs Heartstopper Forever, produced by See-Saw Films. Patrick Walters, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Oseman, Euros Lyn, as well as both Locke and Connor executive produced.