‘Heartstopper’ Creator Alice Oseman on Bringing Charlie’s Mental Health Story to Screen

When Alice Oseman first began crafting the Heartstopper universe roughly a decade ago, she never could have imagined what it would become.

Nick and Charlie — portrayed by Kit Connor and Joe Locke, respectively, in the Netflix adaptation — were originally introduced as supporting characters in Oseman’s 2014 debut novel, Solitaire, which centers on Charlie’s older sister. But Oseman knew from the get-go that Nick and Charlie were destined to be more than just side characters, that their love was something special. They needed their own story, too. And thus, the Heartstopper universe was born.

Oseman, who uses she/they pronouns, started publishing Heartstopper as a webcomic on Tapas and Tumblr in 2016. The comic quickly gained a dedicated fandom — in 2018, they set up a Kickstarter campaign to create a physical version, reaching the fundraising goal in just two hours. Later that year, Hachette Children’s Group acquired the publishing rights; See-Saw Films purchased the television rights in 2019. Oseman is currently working on Volume 6, which will serve as the final entry of the series.

Season 1 of Heartstopper premiered on Netflix in 2022 to widespread acclaim. It went on to earn nine nominations and five wins at the Children’s and Family Emmy Awards. Like the comics, the series — which debuted its third season on October 3 — centers on the unlikely romance between shy, openly gay teen Charlie and popular rugby player Nick, who eventually comes out as bisexual.

“I just started Heartstopper because I wanted to tell Nick and Charlie’s story, and to see that the story has helped people is really the most special thing you can possibly hear as an author,” Oseman tells The Nerds of Color over Zoom. “Everything to do with how Heartstopper has blown up has been completely unexpected. It’s not something I ever would have imagined. I feel very lucky, amazed, grateful, and just glad that Heartstopper is doing some good in the world.”

[Warning: Spoilers below for Heartstopper Season 3.]

While much of the praise for Heartstopper stems from the show’s stellar LGBTQ+ representation, the latest season has garnered attention for another reason: its authentic portrayal of mental health.

In Season 3, Charlie continues to struggle with eating. Eventually, he reaches a breaking point and, with Nick’s support, makes the tough decision to try inpatient treatment. During his time at the treatment center, he is diagnosed with an eating disorder, as well as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). While Heartstopper has dabbled in some tough subjects in the past, this season takes a pointedly sharp turn — while Nick and Charlie are still Nick and Charlie, this chapter of their story is darker and considerably more mature. “It was quite scary to do something so different, but I think it worked out in the end,” Oseman says.

Below, Oseman chats with The Nerds of Color about the challenges of adapting Charlie’s mental health storyline from the comics to the screen, how they crafted the standout Episode 4 [“Journey”], and what this season surprisingly has in common with The Bear.

The Nerds of Color: This season was so special to me. Authentic representation of eating disorders and OCD is so rare to see on screen, especially when it comes to teenage boys. Going into this season, what was your biggest goal as a storyteller?

Alice Oseman: I wanted it to feel realistic. I think that was the priority for me — for it to feel authentic and truthful as much as it could be. The challenge was [that] I wanted to show the reality of it and how difficult it can be to have an eating disorder, but also, I didn’t want it to become so gratuitous and triggering and harmful to watch because that’s not helpful for people. I didn’t want it to become too dark, but I also didn’t want it to skim over anything and gloss over the seriousness of the issue — so, there was a fine line right in the middle of those two places that I wanted to stay on. That was a challenge when I was writing the books, and it was a challenge again when I was reworking it into the show.

What was the most challenging part of adapting Charlie’s mental health storyline from the comics to the screen?

Episode 4 is the darkest period of Charlie’s mental health journey — when he’s really at his lowest point. In the comics, that three-month period is shown through journal entries. We see little snippets of what’s going on during those three months, enough to tell us what’s happened without it feeling endlessly triggering and horrible to read. When approaching the show, I was like, “Oh, that’s a really different sort of storytelling. We’ve never done anything like that in the show before. Could we do that?” We decided this was the perfect time to do something different in the show and introduce narration — very similarly to the comics, it’s all done in this montage style where we spend little moments in the scenes before moving through a long period of time for one single episode.

I thought the narration was a really interesting stylistic choice. Something that struck me was that it starts with Nick’s perspective. Why was it important to share both boys’ points of view here?

Well, they’re each dealing with the impact of Charlie’s eating disorder in very different ways. Heartstopper is about Nick and Charlie — they are both the main characters of the story. Charlie is dealing with his eating disorder, and we see the darkest parts of that, and then we see his steps toward recovery. But Heartstopper is also Nick’s story. Nick’s journey throughout Season 3 is very linked to what Charlie is going through. Nick loves Charlie. He wants to help. He feels, as Charlie’s boyfriend, he needs to fix everything, but he has to learn that he can’t do that. He just can’t solve everything with love. I think that’s an experience that many people can relate to. If you are close to someone who is dealing with a very serious illness, you might feel like you need to be the one to solve it all, to do everything and fix everything, but that’s just impossible. So, that’s Nick’s own challenge that he has to face.

Yeah, I’ve had similar experiences to Charlie, but I also resonated with Nick here. Another thing I appreciated about this storyline was that, even though Charlie has a good experience at the treatment center, he’s not just magically all better when he comes home. They’re fairly brief snippets on screen, but how did you approach filming those relapse scenes?

I knew it was important to show some of that. It was really thinking about how much to show and what specifically we [the audience] should be seeing, particularly in regard to Charlie’s self harm. I know from the research that I’ve done over the many years that I’ve been writing this story, [is] that we should never see Charlie self-harming ever — that’s not helpful for anyone to see. But also, Charlie’s relapse is important, because it shows that even though Charlie has come out of the very worst part of it, it’s not all better. He’s still struggling. The journey is not all uphill. It’s going to be a bit of a roller coaster.

Were any mental health experts involved with this season?

Yeah, we worked with an eating disorder charity called Beat. They came on board in the pre-production process. They read all the scripts and, basically, said, “Here’s all the things that are really good. Here are the things you could slightly tweak.” They’re thinking about it from the perspective of, “How are people who have eating disorders going to feel about what you’ve written and what they’re seeing on screen?” So, that was helpful and reassuring.

Charlie is also diagnosed with OCD. I was really struck by the scene, “He knew the compulsions didn’t make sense, but he couldn’t stop.” How did you approach explaining Charlie’s compulsions to the audience? Because it seems like a hard thing to do on screen.

It’s interesting — it’s something that I didn’t immediately understand about Charlie’s eating disorder way back when I first wrote this storyline in the books. I always knew I wanted Charlie’s eating disorder to come from a place of control and a kind of irrational compulsion. It was only through a lot more research that I started to understand that that was linked to OCD, and those two things were working together for Charlie. And yeah, it’s a really difficult thing to express. But, in the show, we’ve got the animations, which I think are a really good way to show some of those irrational thoughts and feelings that Charlie has. Like this scene when Charlie’s in the art room, and he’s got his lunch in front of him — he’s looking down at it, but it just looks like horrible squiggles, and you can’t even see what’s in there. That [scene is] trying to capture the feeling of having OCD and having an eating disorder without having just to give a dictionary definition of it.

I also wanted to discuss the scene where Charlie tells Nick about his diagnosis over the phone. It could have just been a very dark moment, but there’s a little humor and lightheartedness. Why was that the right approach here?

To me, that just felt real. Sometimes, you’ve just got to laugh in such a dark time. Sometimes you just want to joke about it and giggle about it, and I think that’s what Charlie needs at that moment. That phone call with Nick, that’s the first time that they’ve spoken in a month. They haven’t really talked at all, and then they finally have this phone call, and Charlie is probably feeling a lot of anxiety about telling Nick about all this stuff. So yeah, it just felt realistic to me that, at that moment, he would want to make a little joke about it and not have some dark, difficult conversation because he’s probably had a lot of very dark and difficult conversations throughout the time he’s been in the inpatient unit.

Obviously, this season is based on the comics, but were there any other shows you looked to for inspiration regarding how you wanted to portray mental health?

That’s a good question. There wasn’t anything specific, I don’t think, that I referred to. Just thinking about shows that I’ve seen recently — I think The Bear is a really good portrayal of anxiety and depression in showing it without really explaining it at all. It captures how it feels to be going through something that no one else understands. I also love the show Feel Good, [which] captured anxiety and identity in a complex way.

Finally, what was it like watching Joe and Kit bring this storyline to life this season?

They were very excited about this whole storyline. I think they like to be challenged and like it when they’ve got something new to work with. This is a big, new development in the Heartstopper story, so it was really good to feel their enthusiasm and commitment. I always felt they gave it their all in the more serious scenes. They enjoyed having something more difficult to dig their teeth into. They did an incredible job, and I’m very grateful.