Since their debuts as Charlie and Nick in Heartstopper, there’s been a lot of interest in Joe Locke and Kit Connor‘s dating lives and their relationships in real life.
Heartstopper, which premiered on Netflix on April 22, 2022, is based on Alice Oseman’s 2020 graphic novel
of the same name, which tells the love story of Charles “Charlie” Spring (Joe Locke), a shy gay student at Truham Grammar School who was recently outed, and Nicholas “Nick” Nelson (Kit Connor), a popular rugby player a year older than Charlie, who sits next to him in class one morning.
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Joe and Kit, who were both 18 years old at the time Heartstopper premiered, also told Them about how being close in age to their characters (Charlie is 15, while Nick is 16) helped them relate to Charlie and Nick. “I think it makes it more authentic because there’s a time and place for 35-year-olds playing 16-year-olds, you know.,” Joe said. “But Heartstopper is definitely a story that hasn’t been told before and so it should be told with the most authenticity as possible. I mean, me and Kit are still in school. We have our A Levels like three weeks after the show comes out. You couldn’t get anymore in school than that!”
Since the premiere of Heartstopper, fans across the world have fallen in love with Charlie and Nick, and, as a result, have shipped the actors who play them, with many wondering if Joe Locke and Kit Connor dating in real life. Read on for what Heartstopper’s leads have said about their off-screen relationship.
Are Joe Locke and Kit Connor dating from Heartstopper?
Are Joe Locke and Kit Connor dating from Heartstopper? The answer is no. In an interview with Digital Spy in May 2022, Kit confirmed that he and Joe are “very good friends,” which helped when they had to perform intimate scenes as Nick and Charlie. “We’re very good friends, me and Joe. We’re very close. So that helps,” Kit said. “But it’s so invaluable to have an intimacy coordinator right there, sort of giving you that extra blanket. A comfort blanket, he says. Just to give us that extra kind of protection and comfort and general safety.” He continued, “Because there is always a strange element of doing any kind of intimacy scene. You’re sitting in a room, and you might be kissing someone in front of 20 other people in a room. There’s something a bit strange about that. So it’s nice to have someone— everyone’s obviously got our back in that room. But it’s nice to have someone who really is there to make sure that we feel 100 percent fine and safe and comfortable.”
Kit also confirmed that he and Joe are just friends in an interview with Untitled Magazine in May 2022, which helped their performances as Nick and Charlie. “Joe and I are very close, we are comfortable at a point in our relationship where we can take the mick out of each other, that’s the main element of our friendship,” he said. “We just have fun; we feel very at ease with each other. When you spend so much time together on set – most of my scenes were with Joe—it did mean we very quickly got on together. It was a good thing that it did happen as it would’ve been very difficult to portray that relationship if we weren’t as close as we are.”
In an interview with British GQ in July 2023, Kit and Joe slammed rumors and fan speculation about their dating life after the Season 1 premiere of Heartstopper. “The idea of a tabloid being interested in a teenager’s love life is really gross. Someone making money out of rumors about who I – an 18-year-old boy – might be liking or talking to, it’s really gross and perverted,” Joe said.
Connor, who came out as bisexual on Twitter in 2022 due to fan pressure, also reflected on the experience in the interview. “Social media is not a window into my soul at all,” Connor said. “So [it] was the best decision of my life.” He continued: “In many ways it’s great, but as someone who’s in the public eye, if you look for people saying bad stuff about you, you’ll find it. (…) You want to know what people are saying. Everyone wants to be liked, which is slightly heartbreaking when you’re in the position of someone like me or Joe.”
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in May 2022, Kit revealed that the on-screen connection between him and Joe was immediate in their chemistry read. “It was so helpful because it did give us all a few hours to get to know each other and befriend one another,” Kit said. “By the time we were filming and rehearsing it was like, at least we knew each other. I think immediately the team could see some chemistry between the whole cast.” Joe added, “I did a chemistry read with two different Nicks,” to which Kit responded, “And I did one with two different Charlies. It was very confusing at different times. But we found one another, Joe and I, we found one another.”
Kit and Joe also recalled their first time meeting each other in an interview with Them in May 2022. “It was instant. What can we say? It was an immediate connection that we shared,” Kit said. “One of the best decisions about the schedule of how we filmed Heartstopper was that it was quite chronological. In a sense, as these characters got to know each other, we as actors and as people also got to know each other. That doesn’t just work for Nick and Charlie, but for the whole cast, really. We slowly but surely actually started to like each other. Joe and I are really good friends and it’s always a pleasure to share the screen with him.” Joe added, “We’ve gotten to that point in our friendship where you’re allowed to be mean to each other. There was a day on set where our director was like, ‘Guys, I’m getting more Kit and Joe than I am Nick and Charlie.’”
Kit also confirmed that his and Joe’s relationship isn’t as “flirty, cute and nice” as Charlie and Nick’s, which was something they had to “adjust to” when playing their Heartstopper characters. “The way that me and Joe will banter with each other is very much taking the mick out of each other, and that’s not really how Nick and Charlie joke with each other. It’s very sweet, and kind of flirty, cute and nice,” he said. “That was something that we sort of had to adjust to, when we switched on our Nick and Charlie.”
Heartstopper is available to stream on Netflix.