'Heartstopper' star Kit-Connor (Image: Instagram)
The Netflix coming-of-age series Heartstopper premiered this spring to significant acclaim for being a well-made and heartfelt depiction of LGBT youth.
However, one of its stars has been the subject of unreasonable criticism by fans and responded by coming out as bisexual, then telling toxic fans they were “forcing an 18-year-old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show.”
Kit Connor played the bisexual character Nick Nelson, a rugby star who develops a relationship with his classmate Charlie Spring, played by Joe Locke.
Connor’s character is closeted at the outset of the series while Locke’s character is out as gay, and the show’s first season shows Nick having several crushes on boys and girls.
Connor had been receiving undue attention from fans of the show when photos of him holding hands with Maia Reficco surfaced.
For some reason, a few vocal critics took this situation as “queerbaiting” which is a term typically used in fiction for when straight characters are made to seem misleadingly queer for marketing purposes.
It becomes much more strange when talking about a real person, though.
No one owes their fans a disclosure of their sexuality, especially when you’re only 18. Some fans get really heated when they see the potential of a non-queer person who is playing a queer character, which has been a legitimate problem in the industry, but this technique of mass-shaming until the actors ‘fess up about their sexuality is certainly not the right way to address that.
Several of Connor’s co-stars voiced their support of him in the replies to his tweet. The creator of the show, writer Alice Oseman even got involved.
In general, Connor received a lot of love from fans after sharing this news, but he shouldn’t have had to do it the first time. One of Connor’s fans shared a screenshot of the Hearstopper graphic novel which the series is adapted from, where the P.E. teacher Miss Singh summarized why this sort of speculation is gross very beautifully.
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