Kit Connor was “terrified” speaking French in Heartstopper Season 2
Netflix Netflix’s Heartstopper Season 2 continued the graphic novels’ storyline with the main characters’ adventure to Paris and stunned fans with actor Kit Connor’s seemingly perfect French. But Connor revealed he is not as skilled as he made himself out to be.
Based on the novels by Alice Oseman, the second season of the Netflix series had Charlie (Joe Locke), Nick (Connor), and the rest of their friend group go on a school trip to Paris. On their way there, Nick is on a phone call with someone unknown and is speaking French. Not only were fans surprised but so was Tao (William Gao).
In utter shock, he asks Nick how and why he speaks French. Nick reveals his father is French and lives in Paris. Later on in Episode 4, Nick orders ice cream in French with confidence and the seller gives him props on his perfect pronunciation.
It seems that Nick never told anyone about his second language skills as everyone was again left in disbelief. While Nick may speak perfect French in Heartstopper Season 2, Connor revealed that it is an utter lie.
Heartstopper Season 2: Does Kit Connor speak French?
Kit Connor had everyone fooled in Heartstopper Season 2. The British actor doesn’t speak French, according to Cosmopolitan, and had to learn for the Netflix series.
When Connor first auditioned for the role of Nick for Heartstopper, he explained he only knew some French. But he was in no way fluent. Fans can only imagine Connor’s nervousness when filming Season 2 began and he was, for lack of a better word, terrified. While Connor only had to say a few lines, he expressed it was a lot for him to handle.
“We had this French teacher who was really lovely, but also a little bit scary, I think because I was so bad at French. We focused on trying to make me sound like I knew how to speak French as much as possible. Just seeing how far we could go with that,” he said.
It seemed that the writers gave Connor some slack when it came to his French interaction with the ice cream vendor. The vendor is impressed by Nick’s French and comments, “No way! Your accent is very good.” The original line was meant to be, “Oh, are you English? Your accent is perfect.”
One simple line gave Connor nightmares. He was afraid that French fans would pick up on his not-so-perfect French, and would be somewhat offended. He felt the “perfect” aspect was too much.
“Luckily, when I watched the show, I saw they changed that line to, ‘Your accent is very good.’ So that suddenly made me feel a lot better about my accent,” Connor explained, with relief. As someone who took French for eight years and retained next to nothing, Connor gets a gold star.
You can read more about Heartstopper Season 3 here, and what happened in the second season’s finale here.