We should all be so lucky to have such a fond farewell.
Heartstopper Forever closes the current story of Charlie and Nick’s love while opening another door to the future. A lot of tales about growing up do not leave us on such an optimistic, romantic note as we leave high school, and the feature film, directed by Wash Westmoreland, moves this pair’s story towards a more mature next chapter. Editor Todd Downing was tasked with allowing the pain to linger and the heart to burst forth with possibility.
Downing and I talk about how we grow up with characters and letting them go, but I was most surprised that the editor has never worked on the beloved series before. Was there any pressure to hop on board with such a devoted fanbase behind it? You can feel the actors and the directors luxuriating in the longer running time, and it allows you to sit with the characters and the drama in a whole new way.
“Maybe the audience is growing up, too, since they have been watching they were younger, and now they want something a little more mature,” Downing ponders. “Wash’s films are all quite adult like Still Alice and Colette, and I remember doing a job in London and we were both at the Tate Museum. I’ve known Wash for a bit, but I have never pitched myself to him. We were talking about the stuff we were working on and I happened to ask him who was cutting the Heartstopper film–at that time, no one was. I didn’t want to presume anything, and I definitely didn’t want to muddy our friendship.
Wash is so good with actors. When you do half-hour projects, you have to keep that in mind. You cannot linger on things and hinder the runtime, but we didn’t have to think about that since we have almost two hours. We never got the pressure to make it a 90-minute film, so we had the luxury to sit with the characters more. I think it helps the narrative feel a little deeper. I’ve read about how fans and audience really just want to spend time with these characters. They are so loved.”
Before Heartstopper Forever‘s release a lot of fans were chattering about the more adult content found in this film. Nothing is gratuitous and nothing feels unjustly charged, but Downing knew that this audience was ready for something more adult. Before we even see the title card, we share an intimate and public moment between Kit Connor and Joe Locke’s characters, and it feels like a natural progression for two young guys finding love an pushing each other’s boundaries. Downing knew he could take the opportunity to push the narrative in that newer territory.
“It was about experimenting,” he admits. “With the footage we had, it’s not like they shot super explicitly, but you could have pulled the camera back on certain things. You never want it to feel exploitative and it was always a question about what we wanted to show. It’s maturing the storytelling along with the characters. In America, there are no ratings, but in London, where we cut it, it’s a 15 [rating] while, I think, the rest of the show is 12. Alice [Oseman] wanted it to have that maturity so it was true to what she wrote, and Wash was very good at navigating that. He’s not a YA person, and I think that’s why they hired him. He’s part of that whole generation from the ’90s, so his perspective is different than a showrunner for television.”
When Nick and Charlie think that their relationship has hit an unmovable point, the pair goes their separate ways, but the film always makes you feel their longing. There are stretches without dialogue where Downing hits just the right note when one is about to text the other before the scene moves on. You feel that agonizing tension even though no one is saying a word.
“Forever is a bit more cinematic, so I wanted to sit with the characters a little more,” Downing says. “They don’t have to be speaking in order to be telegraphing things to us as an audience. Any time where we could sit before a cut to really let you feel it, we really leaned into that. Sometimes, with the thirty minute episodes, you had to keep the action moving. This is the one of the first times that I’ve jumped into something that has been on before, and I have done a lot of things from the pilot onward or it’s a limited series. You have to remember that you can’t mess with things too much.”
There are a few sequences where we see a lot of the younger cast exploring in social situations like around Christmas time. Nick has too much to drink and objects to another boy flirting with Charlie outside a pub. These are scenes with a lot of establishing material before a big emotional payoff where the action is edited slower to have us steep in the emotions.
“The pub scene starts with them all having a drink and Sahar is on stage, and there is an energy that comes from them all being together,” Downing says. “Nick is getting a little messy dancing, and that was really fun to edit, I have to say, because it was really organic for them to have fun on camera. When Nick goes into the restroom, it jumps a little bit, and I really loved editing that scene. It’s the first time we really see him getting mad at Charlie because he thinks he’s flirting, so we get to see an escalation in their relationship. They haven’t had to explore these things with each other.”
One of my favorite elements to our final moments with the Heartstopper crew comes at the film’s conclusion where we get an epilogue to see where all the characters are heading. Sahar is an artist while Tao visits Elle in Berlin. We drift away from them rather than leave abruptly. Much like Heartstopper itself, it’s a gentle adieu. It’s the kind of ending where you know the characters will be okay.
“It was the first epilogue that I’ve ever done, and we don’t get enough of them,” he says. “It has to hold its own, you know? Some people might think it’s showing the characters again and it’s partly that, but I felt a responsibility to these characters. People love them, so we need to wish them well.”
Heartstopper Forever is streaming now on Netflix.
