In this FRONTPAGE story, the ‘Heartstopper’ star talks drawing inspiration from real-life awkward dating moments, a background in opera, and jazz musicians’ style.
On stage at The Garage in London and looking out onto a sea of people, William Gao stood next to his sister Olivia. It was the biggest show their band Wasia Project had played yet, and he was nervous. Really nervous. “It was at the height of Heartstopper craziness,” says the actor and musician, 20, whose supporting role as grumpy goofball ‘Tao’ in the smash-hit Netflix teen drama had been transforming eyeballs into heart-shapes up and down the country. The crowd comprised Heartstopper devotees, the band’s own growing fanbase, and according to Gao, “a lot of industry people.” He remembers the uncomfortable feeling of hundreds of eyes watching him. When he stepped off stage he experienced a full-on panic attack.
There have been a lot of eyes on Gao since Heartstopper exploded on streaming in April 2022 and became one of Netflix’s most watched English language TV shows, with 24 million hours viewed within two weeks of its debut. Based on Alice Oseman’s popular web comic and graphic novel, the TV show tracks a blossoming romance between two teenage boys, 15 year-old Charlie (Joe Locke), who is out, and 16 year-old Nick (Kit Connor), who isn’t. Gao plays Charlie’s protective best friend Tao, an arthouse movie nerd and the token straight guy in their group of friends.
“Grazi,” says Gao with a smile to the waitress who arrives at our table with coffee and two pistachio sfogliatelle pastries. It’s a blindingly sunny morning in London, a few months before the premiere of Heartstopper’s second series, and we’re sitting outside an Italian deli in Pimlico. Gao is dressed in a pair of paint-splattered Stan Smith sneakers and an oversized checked shirt that belonged to his late grandfather, who passed away about a year ago. Around his neck dangles the Greek goddess Athena, hanging from a thin gold chain. “I watched Normal People,” he grins, giving it a tug.
“You never see a casting brief: East Asian actor, aged 16 or 17,” he says, sipping an iced oat milk latte and pushing back his ’90s boy band-style mop of hair with a pair of sunglasses. “Seeing that brief was an incredible moment of, ‘Oh my gosh, there are roles for people like me.’”
Gao grew up in Croydon, south London. The eldest of three siblings, he is half-Chinese and “like all good Chinese kids” started learning classical piano at the age of five. Years of practice, which he resented at the time, led to a place at Trinity School, a private school for boys with a reputation for music and “the only realistic school my parents could have sent me to” because of its scholarship scheme. He won one, in music, and joined the school’s prestigious, professional choir. For three years, they toured the world, performing opera. Yes, opera. “People think opera is this wanky thing,” Gao explains. The bow-ties, the tiny binoculars, the wigs are often dismissed as the preserve of posh people. “But having grown up performing, it’s incredible. It’s so dramatic. It’s so overwhelming,” he says. He fell in love with the theater of it. And then, the summer after he turned 14, his voice started to break. “It was really sad,” he says. “I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s the end.’ I could feel it in my voice.” No longer able to hit the soprano notes that had provided his ticket out of Croydon, he turned his attention back to his schoolwork, which had been suffering. Still, he missed performing. His godmother encouraged him to apply for the National Youth Theatre. He was in sixth form college, studying for his A-levels, when he saw the casting call for ‘Tao’ listed on their website.
In the second series of Heartstopper, Tao, a lanky misfit who provides much of the show’s comic relief, has something of a glow-up. “I didn’t know I could say no,” he says of his character’s dorky, flicky bob, a look he describes politely as “strong,” “bold,” and when I press him further, not very Will. His own worst haircut was “a buzz cut,” an experiment he describes, with hindsight, as “regrettable.” This time, he wanted his costuming to communicate that the character was growing up. “I said, ‘Maybe in Season 2, we look at something changing,’” he says. As well as a cooler hairstyle, inspired by Tony Leung in Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, Gao suggested bringing in suave collared shirts and French-tucked trousers. Tao debuts his new ‘do to his best friend and crush, a trans girl named Elle (Yasmin Finney), on a movie date. Like a lot of first dates, it doesn’t go precisely to plan.
Gao channeled the awkwardness of a real life cinema date he remembers going on. That didn’t go to plan either. “I made this joke before we went into the cinema, and it just fell flat on its face,” he says. The joke, by the way, was a fart joke. “I find farting hilarious. But she clearly didn’t.” It was his “closing remark” before they went into the screening, and its inelegance hung over them like a bad smell. When the film ended, Gao offered to walk his date to the bus stop. “She was like ‘Actually, I have to call someone,’” he remembers, cringing. “I was like, ‘Oooookayyyyyy… I’m gonna go.’” Gao, who is 6’3”, performs this story, crumpling his tall frame theatrically at its denouement. He is a natural comic, eagerly and endearingly embracing cringe.
It’s possible that Gao gets it from his father, a passionate theater head who dabbled in “a bit of acting” in his twenties and now works for his local council. He introduced his son to classic Hollywood movies, including North by Northwest and Antony and Cleopatra. “The outfits and the hairstyles were quite a big influence,” he says, of the former’s leading man, Cary Grant.
Later, when Gao got into jazz, he started wearing suits. “It was less about what they were wearing,” he says of the musicians whose uniforms he copied. “It was more what they were doing. I wanted to be similar to them and get close to what they were, so I wore the same clothes,” he says. “All black, shiny shoes. Black turtleneck.” He and his musician friends hoped the suits would get them, then aged sixteen and underage, into jazz clubs like Ronnie Scott’s in Soho (they did not). Gao loved improvising, and wanted to be on stage himself.
In 2019 he formed Wasia Project with his sister, Olivia Hardy, a singer who is two years his junior. (The dream pop band now also includes a drummer and a bassist.) As kids, the siblings would often perform shows for their parents. Gao describes their relationship as “quite competitive, but in a healthy way.” That competitive streak would come out when they were playing video games, tussling to see who could build the biggest house or fight the most zombies.
These days, Olivia is his number one ally. Off stage, after performing their sold-out show at The Garage last September when his panic attack hit, Gao says he felt “very, very horrible.” He hadn’t been looking after his breathing. Previously, Wasia Project had only ever played clubs – tiny spaces with a capacity of 80 people. It’s only recently that they’ve “started playing these big rooms,” he says. Gao says he gets nervous before every show, but the anxiety doesn’t stop him from wanting to perform. “I still wanna do it,” he says.
His sister told him they could cancel any future shows, but Gao insisted he just needed a strategy. For their next performance, he planned a series of pre-show rituals. He FaceTimed his godmother and completed two jigsaw puzzles. He practiced regulating his breathing. As his audience swells — and his celebrity too — he’s making sure he’s ready.
Gao recently wrapped shooting on two indie movies — a neo-Western thriller, and a small psychological horror set in an Oxford college. “Because Heartstopper’s so mainstream, right?” he was itching to do something “alternative.” Next, he’s off to Paris Fashion Week. And later this summer, Wasia Project will play at Latitude Festival. It’ll be their biggest stage yet. “We’re trying to get more people wild,” he tells me, when I ask what he wants the vibe to be. “We don’t want injury,” he clarifies. “We just want a mosh pit.”
