Heartstopper star Joe Locke has learned that fame comes with a price: losing your privacy.
In an interview with Teen Vogue alongside his co-star Kit Connor, Locke revealed that fans have gone so far as to contact his mother and grandmother in an attempt to get close to him or pinpoint his location.
“It’s a weird guilt I sometimes feel that, by association, their lives are affected by choices in my life,” he said, noting that his mother has even had to make new social media accounts in order to maintain her privacy.
However, he described boundaries as a “mutual thing” that he, his fans and his loved ones should abide by.
“I need to learn my boundaries and people need to learn their boundaries,” he explained. “Most attention comes from a really good place, and I hope I always appreciate that.”
Locke isn’t the only Heartstopper star who has had fans infiltrate his personal life. After Season 1 of the romantic dramedy series dropped on Netflix, pictures of Connor holding hands with his A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow co-star Maia Reficco went viral, causing fans to accuse him of “queerbaiting.” Connor then came out as bisexual via Twitter after blaming fans for “forcing an 18 year old to out himself.”
“It’s regrettable what happened to me,” Connor told Teen Vogue. “I think it was a bit disappointing. The reaction that I got in just trying to be myself and trying to discover myself and putting boundaries up. But despite that, I was still happy.”
The series, which is based on Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper graphic novel series, has even mirrored Connor’s coming out story through his character Nick, as he tells his brother that he is bisexual in Season 2.
Locke and his fellow co-stars supported Connor and were “very proud of him” for “controlling the narrative” and for “doing his own thing and what was right for him.”
“There’s an idea that it’s part of the job to lose your privacy, that you lose your right to having privacy,” Locke said. “That’s something I hope the next generation of people in the public eye can change…. I think people are understanding that privacy is a nonnegotiable.”
Heartstopper is streaming on Netflix.