Joe Locke on ‘Heartstopper’ Embracing Sex, Being a Queer Marvel Star in ‘Agatha’ and Why ‘There Are Days I Never Want to Play a Gay Character Again’
In late April 2023, Joe Locke, then 19, secured VIP tickets to Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” in Atlanta, where he was shooting the Marvel Studios series “Agatha All Along.” It’d been just over a year since Locke made his professional acting debut in Netflix’s “Heartstopper,” an achingly gentle love story about two British teenage boys that had transformed into a generation-defining sensation. The show’s fans had been flooding TikTok and Instagram — and, of course, Locke’s mentions — with all manner of swoony tributes, so he wasn’t all that shocked when, just minutes after he arrived at his seat, a stream of Swifties began handing him friendship bracelets.
“I had, like, a whole arm of them,” Locke says with a giggle. “I was secretly trying to take them off so people wouldn’t notice, because it was cutting off the circulation.”
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The sudden, intense attention did, however, take Locke’s guests that night by surprise. They knew he was popular, but to watch fan after fan approach, their faces filled with exuberance and awe at getting to share a moment with Locke? “I was unprepared,” says “Agatha All Along” showrunner Jac Schaeffer. “It’s clear he means so much to them because he’s willing to be his authentic self.”
There has never been anyone quite like Joe Locke. It’s not just that he came out years before “Heartstopper,” first to his mother at 12, and then more broadly at 15; it’s that he is so forthrightly gay, from merrily flipping off homophobic protesters at the 2022 London Pride to using a speech for his hometown Pride event on the Isle of Man that same year to demand the local government lift the ban on gay men donating blood. A queer teen standing up for LGBTQ rights is, on one level, an unremarkable event in the 2020s. But for that kid also to become an overnight heartthrob who just made his Broadway debut in “Sweeney Todd” and will be the male lead in a Marvel Studios production — all before turning 21? It’s not hyperbole to say that, for many generations of LGBTQ people, Locke sometimes feels like a miracle.
“I’ve been able to watch his life completely change over the course of filming and the release of the show,” says “Heartstopper” executive producer Patrick Walters. “He remains so consistently who he was when I first met him.”
Locke’s preternatural confidence comes up again and again with his colleagues. “It almost catches you off guard, how true he is to himself,” says “Agatha All Along” star Kathryn Hahn. “I’m telling you, you just never really see him sweat. I remember he corrected me early on, because I said, ‘These witches and this gorgeous wizard.’ And he was like, ‘No, we’re all witches.’ That really stuck with me.”
In person, Locke does seem to wear the singular qualities of his stardom with a composure far beyond his years. But it’s almost a relief to discover that, underneath his self-possession, Locke is still grappling with how much his instant fame has upended his life, and what that means for his identity.
He’s more careful about what he says now, more acutely aware of how the world perceives him, “which I guess makes you grow up faster.” But he’s not a media trained PR whiz, either. As we talk over sushi and shishito peppers on a bright Los Angeles day, Locke speaks with the same halting, self-conscious cadences of any 20-year-old still seeking to know their own mind.
Take Locke’s role on “Agatha All Along.” Officially credited just as “Teen,” the character’s true identity is a crucial story point on the show, so the standard Marvel omertà is in place for any spoilers. But based on one element about Teen that has been confirmed by Marvel — that he’s gay — fans have already been rabidly theorizing that Locke is playing Wiccan, the out grown-up son of Wanda Maximoff who was first introduced as a child in 2021’s “WandaVision” alongside Hahn’s Agatha Harkness. Fan speculation has certainly gone off the rails before, but it’s not like there’s a litany of queer teenage boys in the Marvel canon. Regardless, Locke is poised to join Tessa Thompson as one of the only out actors to play a queer superhero in the MCU, a genuinely monumental turning point in LGBTQ representation.
But when I ask Locke, who’s been watching Marvel movies since he was 5, about possibly making a bit of LGBTQ pop-culture history with this show, his expressive eyes grow even wider.
“I’ve never really thought about it,” he says anxiously. He pauses, stirring his peppers with his fork. “It’s one of those things that gets a bit stressful if you think about it too much.” Then, just as quickly, he flashes a broad, brilliant smile. “But being in a Marvel series is the most pinch me thing.”
With “Agatha All Along” debuting Sept. 18 and the third season of “Heartstopper” following on Oct. 3, Locke’s life will only get more exciting — and unwieldy. “Can you imagine what he’s going through now?” asks Patti LuPone, one of Locke’s “Agatha All Along” co-stars. “Think about it. He is in the Marvel universe. He did a Broadway musical. I don’t know how I would have handled it at his age. And yet he is embracing all of this and rising to the occasion. I don’t think there’s anything he will not be able to do.”
An enduring criticism of “Heartstopper” has been that its audaciously wholesome approach to LGBTQ teen romance — especially with the central couple, Charlie Spring (Locke) and Nick Nelson (Kit Connor) — isn’t terribly realistic. This is best exemplified by the video of drag queens Trixie Mattel and Katya losing their minds over the moment Nick tells Charlie that he wants to spend their time alone in a Paris hotel room just kissing. “I can’t take it anymore!” Trixie screams. “Was this filmed for PBS?!
“We also as a cast have made those jokes many times,” Locke says. “I mean, we always joke that if it was actually real, they’d be in the bathroom just … yeah.” He laughs. “The mushy part became old hat. Me and Kit, we were doing kissing scenes every day. We were like, ‘Right, come here — let’s do it.’”
In Season 3, thankfully, “the show is growing up,” Locke says. “The second half of the season is about sex.” Exploring a new physical dimension of Charlie and Nick’s relationship, he says, was “almost like being in Season 1 again with the first-ever kissing scene. Me and Kit are so comfortable with each other, but it’s still a vulnerable thing to do.”
Locke was even more keen to tackle the first half of Season 3, which concerns Charlie’s struggles with an eating disorder and self-harm stemming from the horrific bullying he faced at school. “Joe has always had so much respect for that aspect of Charlie’s story,” says “Heartstopper” creator Alice Oseman, who adapted the show from her bestselling graphic novels. At the same time, she cast Locke in the role because he was the only actor to see past Charlie’s trauma to find his inner strength and drive. “Most people who auditioned portrayed him as very shy and timid and unassuming,” she says.
After two seasons, Locke savored the opportunity to dig deeper into Charlie’s “dark places,” and trust that he could find his way back. “The not-fun content is almost the most fun stuff to do,” he says. “What I love about Alice’s writing is she can cover quite hard topics, but you always know that it’s going to be OK.”
Expanding past his own boundaries has become of paramount importance to Locke. Should Netflix renew “Heartstopper” for a fourth season, Oseman says it would be the show’s last, so one way or another, Locke’s days as Charlie are numbered. He’s cherished playing him, but he’s also acutely aware of how entwined his identity has become with Charlie’s — not just as a character, but as a pioneering voice in the current moment of LGBTQ storytelling.
“I find all of it quite overwhelming,” he says. “In a good way, but still overwhelming. Sometimes I feel very accepting of it, and some days I want to push it away because I’m afraid of — I don’t know — the responsibility of it, almost.”
I tell him that it seems like a lot to put on a person who is just starting out in the world.
“Yeah, and there are days that I never want to play a gay character again,” he says. “Most of the casting I get sent are for gay characters.”
He talks about a movie he couldn’t do this summer due to scheduling, in which he would’ve played a straight character, and the voice in his head that keeps insisting that he needs to prove to the industry that he can play non-gay roles, that he’s not “a one-trick pony who was just the guy from ‘Heartstopper.’”
“Which in itself is maybe a problem of the industry, or a problem of me and my internalized homophobia,” he adds. “I don’t know.”
Until very recently, this has been the story of virtually all out queer actors, perpetually stuck in the purgatory of other people’s limited imaginations. Instead, Locke’s been invited into the MCU with “Agatha All Along,” playing a gay character with the kind of dimensionality he’s been craving.
“The show never shies away from his queerness, but it’s not a defining feature of his character,” he says. “It’s just one layer of him as a person.”
In one of his many interviews following the premiere of “Heartstopper” in 2022, Locke even kind of manifested the role, when he mentioned off-hand that he’d love to play a queer Marvel superhero. By the time the article was published, he’d gotten his first callback for “Agatha All Along.”
“I was like, ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit. They’re not going to cast me now because I’ve said it!’” he remembers. Eight auditions later, Locke did land the part, only to learn that he wouldn’t be getting into superhero shape.
“I thought you get cast in a Marvel show, you get paid to get really muscly and hench,” he says, using a Britishism for “buff.” “‘We want you to stay small and twink-y’ is basically what they said, in a very corporate way.”
Once on set, Locke endeared himself to the show’s otherwise all-female cast of witches, which includes Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata and Debra Jo Rupp alongside Hahn and LuPone.
“This isn’t stepping into any Marvel project,” Schaeffer says. “Joe, young queer icon that he is, was joining a cast of queer icons.”
Rather than scatter to their trailers in between shots, the women hung out on set, and like any self-respecting young gay man, Locke didn’t miss a minute of it. “It’s like a group of big sisters,” he says. “We just would banter and joke and have fun and laugh. Patti would play music sometimes, and we’d all have a dance.”
The moment the subject of LuPone enters our conversation, Locke brings out his phone to play me a voice memo he received from the Broadway legend after he texted her a photo of the two of them together. “I love this picture!” LuPone coos, sounding like an aunt gushing over her nephew. “I want this to be my new headshot, you and me. Aw, Joe, I miss you. I love you, honey.”
“It is a very pretty picture of us,” LuPone tells me later. “It gives me street cred.”
When they first started working on “Agatha All Along,” she couldn’t help worrying about Locke — he was such a pure soul, so earnest and vulnerable and kindhearted, that she was certain he’d be battered by “negotiating the treacherous path of show business.” She even told Locke that she wanted to give him “diva lessons.”
But then, one night filming ran long, and LuPone watched as Locke was asked if he would cut short his turnaround — the 12-hour break guaranteed between shoot days — so they could start early the following morning to make up the time. Locke agreed, but then he added, “This will never happen again.”
“At 19, I would’ve just gone, ‘OK, OK, whatever you need,’ and then resent it later,” LuPone says. “I looked at him and said, ‘Well, you don’t need any div lessons!’ It was really, really impressive.”
“I love my sleep,” Locke says, betraying not a hint of regret for establishing a firm boundary. “Anyone who’s ever worked with me will know that that is very important to me.”
Locke is similarly girding himself for online reactions to his character, after the trailers for “Agatha All Along” sparked some backlash — as much from LGBTQ fans as anyone else. “It was like, ‘Oh, why has Marvel done this campy gay stereotype?’” he says, his voice taking on an edge for the first time. “It really annoyed me because I was like, ‘You can’t ask for authentic casting and then be upset if you have a camp character.’” He shrugs. If he’s learned anything in the last two years, it’s how to maneuver through others’ expectations. “I’m fully aware that the Marvel fandom is far less nice than the ‘Heartstopper’ fandom. There’s going to be a lot of people that just hate everything about the character and everything about what I’ve done with it, and I just have to be OK with that.”
His eyes suddenly take on an impish glint. “Marvel fans are very open with their opinions. But they’re not in a Marvel show, so—” He blows a raspberry. “I’m doing the one thing that they really wish they could be doing. Sorry!”
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