‘Maybe you could end the article with something about how I proved everyone wrong. But I want it to be positive: like, this is only the beginning.’ In the 15 or so years I’ve been interviewing famous people, I don’t think anyone has ever before offered me advice on how I should conclude my profile of them. But then 19-year-old Yasmin Finney, the British star of Netflix’s wildly successful series Heartstopper, an adaptation of the bestselling graphic novels by Alice Oseman about queer love at a British secondary school, isn’t like other celebrities. And that is a huge part of Finney’s incredible charm. She smiles and tosses her braids. ‘I’m not a writer though,’ she laughs, and eventually agrees she’ll leave it to me.
By this point, two hours after having first met on a blustery spring day in North Greenwich, south-east London, Finney says she feels as though she’s told me her ‘whole life story’, and I feel that I’ve met someone so wildly confident and self-assured that I’ve had to recalibrate everything I thought I knew about teenage angst. I’ve also learned that she’s a Virgo in every way; as she puts it: ‘not even with fame, but with everything I do, everything is overcalculated and overthought’.
But let’s start at the beginning, before the Netflix contract, the new role in Doctor Who, the Tiffany campaign, the YSL Beauty campaign, the 23.6 million TikTok likes, the magazine covers and designers clamouring to dress her for shoots and glamorous events. Before Heartstopper became a Netflix Top 10 hit, trending on Twitter for weeks and capturing the hearts and minds of every generation with its feel-good storylines. ‘The moment I came out of my mum’s vagina I didn’t cry. I didn’t blink,’ Finney tells me. ‘They thought I was dead because I was just so quiet. I was looking at everyone like, “Is this it? Is this what I’ve been waiting for?”’
We walk through the Design District to QueerCircle, an LGBTQ community centre for arts, culture and social action. We take a seat in the calm of the library. Finney is grateful for the peace. She’s tired, she tells me as she removes her baseball cap and shearling-lined Birkenstock clogs. She’s wearing ripped jeans and a grey hoodie. ‘Can I just say – I got my braids done yesterday. And they started at 4pm. Guess what time I finished? 7am! I’ve had two hours’ sleep!’ Finney grew up in Trafford, Manchester. ‘We came from poverty, lived on a council estate. I remember me and my mum were actually homeless for two weeks, living from hotel to hotel. But I was still going to school every morning – barely able to afford school meals.’ At home, Finney’s mum raised Finney and her half-sister with little support from their wider family, whose religious beliefs didn’t chime with their own. ‘They believe God’s gonna do everything for them,’ Finney explains. ‘But from a young age I felt like I had absolutely no one.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘I barely fit into my normal day-to-day world as a young kid; I’m definitely not gonna fit in this family that is super-religious.’
She says: ‘My childhood is kind of like a blur. It’s all gone so quickly. I’m only 19!’ Her relationship with her mum was ‘rocky’ as a young teenager, although it’s much better now. Her elder half-sister left home to study at the University of Leeds, where she met her husband, with whom she now has a child. ‘My sister and I have a similar story,’ Finney says. ‘Both of our dads ran away from our mum [when we were] a very young age. But my sister is now the polar opposite of me. She’s got A*s in everything. We do have the same drive. We must have got that from our mum. But she’s smart and has embraced the normal life that everybody tells you to live: husband, baby. And she’s gone down this academic route. But I was never really made for that path. It was never made for me.’
Finney was the misfit in the family; assigned male at birth, she has had to fight to be accepted as the girl she is, whether at home, school or within society at large. ‘I have always been feminine, whether I liked it or not. It’s never been like, “Oh my god, I’m trans now.”’ At primary school she had what she calls a ‘Destiny’s Child friendship group’. They were four Black girls – the only Black girls in the class. ‘I didn’t come out as trans at that point, but obviously I was hanging around with the girls. It’s always been a natural sort of aura.’
When she was seven her grandmother bought her a tutu. ‘She was the only one who saw me for me. I’d dance around in it at her house but then rush to take it off when my mum came to get me,’ she says. From the way she describes it, there was never any doubt in her mind that she was transgender, though it was more of a journey for her mother, who is now fully accepting and supportive of her daughter.
But there was no way young Finney was going to be defeated by her ‘misfit’ status. She describes herself to me as, ‘somebody who was made to lead a whole generation and be this proud and outspoken beam of light for all the younger kids to look up to and be like, “Oh my God, I could be that”’. So she found the power in her otherness and took control of her narrative – largely thanks to social media, on which she became a natural star from the moment she first got a phone.
‘I always stood out, even before any of this acting stuff, I’ve always been in the limelight. I’ve always been show- casing my experience as a trans person, whether on TikTok or Twitter,’ she explains. ‘When I was super-young in high school and getting bullied, I had this willpower to go home and forget about it all by documenting my experience and building this community of people that had similar experiences as me.’ Finney has a steely determination not to be a victim of the circumstances she was born into, but to thrive in spite of them.
Growing up in a TikTok world, Finney clearly speaks internet. Ending sentences with ‘period’; saying, ‘It’s giving...’ to describe anything. And I’m taken by the way she refers to this amorphous ‘you all’ as we chat – I presume she means her fans, her audience, the consumers of her content. It’s so effortless and natural, but then, for someone born in 2003 who was no doubt online as a pre-teen and had achieved global fame by 17, it is – to her at least – quite unremarkable to have a ‘public’ to talk to.
She attended The Manchester College to study performing arts, and it was while she was there that she was approached by Billy Porter’s team, who had seen her lip-syncing to a scene from his series Pose on a TikTok, and asked to audition for his new film. She was quite far along in the process when she spotted the advert for open auditions for a new Netflix show called Heartstopper.
Finney will have an even bigger role in season two as her romance with Tao really takes flight. Later, I speak to Patrick Walters, who executive produced both seasons of the show, about his experiences working with Finney. ‘We all felt when we met Yasmin that it was a once-in-a-lifetime talent spot,’ he tells me. ‘We had found someone with such reserves of energy and talent and brilliance who is also incredibly funny.’ Walters calls her ‘an old soul’ and says: ‘She’s so magnetic and beautiful and ambitious and loves fashion and acting and has so much energy and passion – of course her star was going to rise.’
Finney tells me her mother was thrilled when she got the part of Elle. ‘She said, “You’re gonna be on Netflix, child! This is everything you’ve wanted. It’s a real job!” Her main worry was me surviving in this world, paying bills and being an adult. So when I got Heartstopper, it was the first legit job, and it was a job that highlighted who I was as a trans person – what’s not to love about it?’
She’s excited to tell me about the new flat, with its own balcony, in a well- to-do area of south-west London, that she’s rented, all off her own bat. ‘It’s me and my dog,’ she says. ‘I pay my own bills. I take out my own trash, and do my own dishes. At this age! It’s unheard of that somebody from Manchester, a self-made trans queer, has their own very nice three-bedroom place in London.’
Her friends are a group of similarly ambitious twentysomethings (she’s the youngest), many of whom she met at the queer club Adonis in London. There are actors, singers, models and club promoters among her crew. Her most fun night out yet (or, as she puts it, ‘a level up to all the other nights I’ve ever had’) was at The Fashion Awards, to which she wore a black velvet sculptural Harris Reed dress. ‘I remember hitting the red carpet and just feeling goosebumps all over my body. It was truly a moment where I was like, “Wow, this is crazy. Life is crazy.”’ She talks about how she’s constantly elevating herself and needs to keep lifting the people she hangs out with, too. Suffice to say, she’s not really stayed great mates with anyone from her childhood.
Dating is daunting, she tells me, but she does enjoy it even if she’s been banned by most of the apps for ‘impersonating a celebrity’. She certainly doesn’t need a man to ‘complete’ her though. ‘The guys I go out with, dare I say it, they do get intimidated by me and I’m trying to date people my own age, so...’ Honestly, she says, she’s happy by herself. ‘When you have to rely on other people’s validation you’re not going to survive in this world. This world wasn’t built on your boyfriend buying you everything. Be your own sugar daddy!’
She describes herself as a born survivor. Her drive and determination to do it all, and do it all for herself, is palpable. She found out everything she’d need to do to socially – and later potentially medically – transition. ‘Everything [her name and gender marker] was changed before I hit college. Change your name. Change it on your passport, change your gender, get diagnosed with gender dysphoria,’ she explains. She makes it sound easy now, but says: 'The NHS is a completely broken system. I've been on a waiting list for eight years now. So even me, almighty trans beam of light, struggles with the system. You can’t escape it no matter who you are.’
If anyone else described themselves in such terms you might be forgiven for thinking they were a little, well, full of themselves. But Finney does it with such innocence and authenticity, I like her even more for it. The queer community has traditionally always found some kind of fabulous way to rise high above hatred and the shackles of being marginalised by society. It is at the root of the Ballroom drag scene: Black, queer, trans people – assaulted, harassed and made to feel like second-class citizens in every- day life – created their own glamorous world of Queens, and Kings, and Legendary Children.
Finney’s next big role is in Doctor Who (the eponymous Doctor now to be played by fellow Black queer actor Ncuti Gatwa). ‘I’m honoured to be a part of that universe, to be a part of that world. I grew up watching Doctor Who and being obsessed with Russell T Davies’ writing.’ The BBC and Davies have announced that she is playing Rose Tyler (a role previously played by Billie Piper), although just how they’re bringing the character back is still top secret. Finney is happy to ‘keep you all guessing’ but we know that she’s definitely not Gatwa’s new assistant. ‘What I can tell you is it’s about time, you know? It will definitely reach the audience it needs to reach and it’s going to be so needed.’
Eventually, after Finney makes her suggestions about how I should write up this interview, we head out of Queer- Circle and stand under the cable-car that soars up and over the River Thames. We should have done the interview in one of the pods, we agree. It certainly would have afforded me with all the metaphors I could ever need to describe this formidable young actress, floating on top of the world. I walk her to her car and as she gets in, she says: ‘Maybe next time we meet, I’ll be a completely different person.’ Please don’t change, I urge her. She’s spectacular, exactly as she is: an almighty trans beam of light – even if she does say so herself.
Heartstopper season 2 is released on Netflix this summer.
