Manx actor Joe Locke is digging out from the heart and suiting up to fly across screens in Marvel’s WandaVision sequel series Agatha: Coven of Chaos. Floating over dark sky, the 19-year-old Heartstopper star will now whip into orbit alongside Kathryn Hahn (Tiny Beautiful Things, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and Broadway olympian Patti LuPone.
“She didn’t have any filter because she’s Patti LuPone,” Locke told the EW about LuPone’s blink on The View. “She’s incredible and I love her so much, but I remember we were all on set watching the interview and we were like, ‘No! Patti, stop talking! Stop talking!’ It was like a ripple effect. Everyone was like, ‘Have you seen Patti’s interview?!'”
LuPone (American Horror Story, Beau Is Afraid), who shattered glasses singing in Evita, said that the show will drop into the eye of the storm of which Locke, Sicilian spellbinder Lilia Calderu, LuPone, and Hahn, Aubrey Plaza (Emily the Criminal, The White Lotus), will bring the wind, rain, and lightning.
Strumming the chords on playing the first queer Marvel superhero or Disney prince after powering up his and Kit Conner’s (His Dark Materials, Rocketman) careers on Netflix’s marvel Heartstopper, Locke’s manifested at least part of the song. “Putting your energy into something is never gonna harm a situation. With Marvel, I was very determined to get the part,” he said. “I had never been that determined about anything before, which I think meant that I was putting my energy into it. But I also think I’ve just been one of the luckiest people in the world in the last two years.”
Season 1 of Heartstopper, filling up a second syringe on August 2, will chant as the first legitimate acting role for the openly gay teen from the Isle of Man. Fans of the show knitted hearts to their sleeves for the queer YA romance about the flourishing love between Gumby-lean teen Charlie (Locke) and class jock Nick (Connor).
“Having Kit to go on this journey with has been amazing,” Locke said. “There’s not really many people in the world who can quite understand what it is to suddenly have people caring about what you do and what you wear and what you look like and what you say. Every single thing you do is scrutinized.” Even which concerts you haunt. Locke captioned headlines when he popped in at Taylor Swift’s Era Tour. “I really should have thought about the overlap between Heartstopper fans and Taylor Swift fans,” he admitted. “I was very shocked by the amount of people who were coming to say hi.”
Early on, Locke was advised to cancel Twitter, which he said “was the best decision I made.” In Locke’s absence from Twitter, comic book addicts swear he will play a grown Billy Maximoff, a.k.a. Wiccan, son of the Scarlet Witch, who’s enchanted by Elizabeth Olsen (Avengers: Infinity War, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness).
Locke feels constantly bewitched to know what people are saying about him online, even the bad things that some people suspect of him. He observed that Connor had been dealt the same hand as, at 18, he tweeted that he felt forced to reveal that he was bisexual. He then took an interlude from social media. “I’m a very private person I think,” Locke said. “If I look at the hugeness of the world that I’m entering, I will combust, which is something that I’ve learned the hard way post Heartstopper.”
“The show is about misunderstood people and people who are alienated by their society for reasons that they can’t control,” he said about how WandaVision charmed LGBTQ viewers, like himself. “I think that resonates lot with the queer community.” Diagnosing its descendant, Coven of Chaos, Locke teased, “I think there’ll be some camp.”
With Sasheer Zamata (Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Waco: The Aftermath), Emma Caulfield (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, WandaVision), and Debra Jo Rupp (WandaVision, That ’70s Show) casting spells over the show, Locke was “extremely excited” and “utterly terrified” to join the cast. As a theater nerd, Locke was in shock of LuPone, who hugged him at the first rehearsal. “I’ve learned so much from all six of the leading ladies about how to act as a person, as a lead of a show, as an actor respecting the crew,” he explained. “I learned a lot about the actor that I want to be from these women.”
After returning to set to film season 2 of Heartstopper, Locke felt the pulse of living up to the blood spurt of the first season. “Which I think made me get in my head a little bit when we started filming,” said Locke. “But then once you’re like three or four weeks in, you’re so tired that all you can think about is doing a good job and making sure that you are looking after yourself enough to be present on set.”
The blood for season 2 is thicker than season 1, which is pumped mostly from Vol. 3 of the graphic novel series by Alice Osman. With prom and a field trip to Paris for Nick and Charlie, the wings of the next eight episodes still beat with the intensity of being a teen. But these arteries need stents as Charlie works through depression and an eating disorder, a vein that comes from the source material.
“Our show’s never gonna be Euphoria,” Locke said. “But I think that our show’s maturing with the characters. As they grow up, the show grows up. Season 2 is not just gentle, but it’s still gentle.”
Locke hopes to be more than just that Heartstopper guy. “I have a real problem with feeling like I have to prove myself to the world — to myself mostly,” he explained. “So I would love to do a job that is so far the opposite of Heartstopper, or opposite of Agatha, that I could show some versatility.” He continued, “I’d love to do a dark role. I just want to bring a lot of edge to it and show that I can do more than just sickly sweet.”