Since the summer of 2022, the most hyped group at the London Pride parade has been the glass-skinned Heartstopper clan — stars of Netflix’s wildly popular LGBTQIA+ high school drama, which has now clocked up more than 150 million total viewing hours across its three acclaimed seasons.
To many of the teens who made the pilgrimage on Saturday, July 5, taking the train from their corner of the country in order to congregate in our capital and get a taste of the gay fun of it all, the cast of this show are godlike: the characters helped them better understand themselves, making the world feel a little less lonely.
“The first year [the Heartstopper cast marched together] was really unofficial, we were honestly just there as a group of friends,” says Sebastian Croft, 23, who plays the devilishly handsome bully Ben Hope in the series. He was joined by fellow cast members Joe Locke, Kit Connor and Yasmin Finney, who wore their rainbow flags as capes.
“There was a group of people protesting Pride, which they have the right to do, but it was almost comical: these old people waving their signs shouting things that felt so archaic. Everyone just started dancing at them,” Croft recalls. Music blared, the young stars jived, and Locke flipped off the protesters. Of course, video footage of the interaction promptly went viral. “Seeing it have such a reaction and seeing people be so supportive was unbelievable,” he says.
From that moment, it has become an annual tradition to see them tackle Pride together — this year, to the delight of their millions of combined followers, fans could find them in a specific place: selling merch out of a converted horse trailer on Soho’s Greek Street. You couldn’t miss it, as artist Jack Taylor Lovatt had scrawled, in his signature lettering, the words “Queer Past” across it. The T-shirts, caps and jumpers they are selling were long set to be the status symbols of London Pride 2025 (they’ve already been spotted on Troye Sivan, David Tennant and Jessie Ware) and bear the same slogan; part of a new capsule collection from Croft’s charity Queer Was Always Here, which he founded with the Canadian actor Connor Jessup, 31, in 2022. It began with a one-off T-shirt featuring two kissing dinosaurs, named Dylan and Derek, and was sold in partnership with Choose Love, the 2015-founded charity formerly known as Help Refugees.
“The two gay dinosaurs kissing were to remind everyone that queer has always been here,” Croft says. “When you grow up, you can feel like you’re the first gay person ever. The idea that queerness actually has a real history, that animals can be gay and the stories date back to the Ancient Greeks, was really interesting to me.”
It was a runaway success. “We sold loads of T-shirts, and it felt like this thing suddenly existed: people had got Dylan and Derek tattooed on their arm. They had phone cases, jumpers — it had kind of taken on a life of its own.”
“When you’re coming to terms with your queerness, no matter your age, there’s a sense of isolation and also newness. That this is something that doesn’t have deep roots. QWAH is about recognising we are the inheritors of a deep legacy. We have a history, we have a community,” Jessup continues.
Fast forward to today, and the boys have produced four T-shirt campaigns and raised more than £250,000, supporting over 1,700 refugees through six grassroots organisations including Rainbow Railroad, based in the US and Canada, which helps relocate LGBTQIA+ people in danger of persecution, and the Say It Loud Club, which provides social, emotional, educational and advocacy support for queer refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.
“It’s a moment of rising violence in lots of places in the world and wider conflict affects queer people, just as it affects everyone, but queer people face specific challenges,” Jessup says. “You don’t have to look very far in the countries that we live in to see rights are being rolled back too. The most vulnerable communities are being attacked and made to feel unsafe.”
Croft agrees. “Pride this year feels like it has a slightly different tone than it has in previous years. I think the work that the organisations we support do is so important and really under threat. There’s a lot of people who need Pride in 2025 more than in recent years.”
It’s for this reason they have brought their charity from digital into the real world — there will also be a stand selling the collection in-store at Selfridges. “We’re really making an effort to get off the internet and to do more in real life, to meet people, to have our feet on the ground of Pride,” Jessup says. “To try and build a more effective campaign, but also more of a sense of community.”
Croft, who grew up in Oxford and made his West End debut in Oliver! at Drury Lane in 2010 aged eight, despised going to school. “I was very badly bullied, and it was inherently quite homophobic,” he says.
“I grew up acting in the theatre where most people are gay or at least allies, and remember coming out of the stage door and seeing all the drag queens out in Soho. Growing up in a country like the UK and being able to have a place like Soho that you can visit is, in some ways, the best entry into the world that a queer person could hope for, and it was still really difficult,” he continues.
“To be in a country where you could be killed for being gay — that’s why we are doing the work we are doing.”
Queer Past tee, £40, available at Selfridges and queerwasalwayshere.com
