Joe Locke is having quite a year! After starring in two of streaming’s biggest shows Heartstopper and Agatha All Along, fans want to know who the star is dating.
He plays Charlie Spring, a gay teenager in love with Kit Connor’s character Nick Nelson on Netflix’s Heartstopper. Since the show’s evergrowing popularity, Joe has been open about talking about his queerness. “I have been openly gay since I was, like, 12,” he told The New York Times. He came out publicly on his Instagram but retracted the statement. “So I quickly deleted it and said my Instagram had been hacked. I went back in the closet for three years. I retold all my friends and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you told us two years ago.’”
Related: Heartstopper‘s Joe Locke Explains How His Coming Out Was ‘Different’ Than Charlie
Now, he’s open and proud of who he loves and reflects it to his Heartstopper character. “12-year-old me would be very proud, and terrified” of all that he’s accomplished. “I’m getting emotional. I’ve never thought about it in that sense before, which is weird because I’ve thought about the show a lot.”
Who is Joe Locke dating?
Joe Locke keeps his personal life private and for a good reason! It’s not known whether or not he’s dating anyone currently, but in 2023, the US Sun reported that he joined the dating app Hinge. The screenshots of Joe’s profile are pretty convincing that the Netflix star joined the app in search of love, but like anyone these days, it could certainly be a catfish.
He told British GQ about how he doesn’t like the media attention on his dating life. “The idea of a tabloid being interested in a teenager’s love life is really gross,” Locke said at the time. “Someone making money out of rumours about who I – an 18-year-old boy – might be liking or talking to, it’s really gross and perverted.”
Did Joe Locke ever date Kit Connor?
The answer to that is no. Though they have amazing chemistry on-screen, Joe Locke and Kit Connor shut down rumors that they were dating IRL. In an interview with Untitled Magazine in May 2022, Kit said, “Joe and I are very close, we are comfortable at a point in our relationship where we can take the mick out of each other, that’s the main element of our friendship,” he said. “We just have fun; we feel very at ease with each other. When you spend so much time together on set – most of my scenes were with Joe—it did mean we very quickly got on together. It was a good thing that it did happen as it would’ve been very difficult to portray that relationship if we weren’t as close as we are.”
