star Kit Connor has after.
The actor, 19, stars as Nick Nelson, in the hit series based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novels of the same name.
However last year Kit was ‘forced to out himself’ after being met with backlash for refusing to label his sexuality, with some people going so far as to accuse him of queerbaiting.
Now he’s spoken more about the decision to come out in that way, which he explained he hadn’t been ready for at all.
‘I just felt like it wasn’t something I was ready to talk about,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t angry. I was just slightly disappointed by this reaction.’
While he’s explained that he didn’t feel that ‘forced’ was the right word to use now, Kit admitted he ‘would have preferred to do it another way’.
‘I also don’t know if I would have ever done it.
‘But at the end of the day I don’t regret it. In many ways it was really empowering,’ he added while speaking to .
Speaking about his sexuality Vogue, Kit said he had been coming to terms with it since before being cast in Heartstopper.
‘It was just a very natural process for me; I didn’t really have an “oh, sh** moment. It just became more and more evident,’ he explained.
Although he said his family were ‘super accepting and inclusive and wonderful’, his all-boys school was less so, and he ‘wasn’t really accepted in a lot of ways’.
He also said he struggled internally with the narrative around those who are bisexual – ‘It’s the experience of maybe you’re too straight to be gay and you’re too gay to be straight’ – but he was now feeling much more ‘secure’ in himself.
When appearing on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast in May last year, Kit said he wasn’t ‘too big on labels’, especially doing so publicly.
‘It feels a bit strange to make assumptions about a person’s sexuality just based on hearing their voice or seeing their appearance,’ he said.
The actor added it was a ‘slightly problematic sort of assumption to make’.
Heartstopper season 1 is available to stream on Netflix and season 2 lands on August 3.
