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"Ahoy there, mister!" the bright-eyed newsies calls to me from the barren street corner. "Have you heard the latest? Olivia Colman's performance as a mom on Netflix is winning raves!"
"Why sure, I've heard," I reply. "Her mid-term Queen Elizabeth II is astonishing! Quirky and idiosyncratic, but with a darkness at the edges. Her relationship with Charles has never been more complex!"
"No, fool!" the newsie cried, chucking his papers into the flooded gutter. "Not that one, the other one!"
"Ah!" I gasped. "Of course. Her Oscar-nominated turn in Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter, as a mother whose ambivalence seems malevolent!"
"Once again you have failed my test, mortal!" the newsie bellowed. "I AM SPEAKING OF OLIVIA COLMAN'S LUMINOUS PERFORMANCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL ROMANCE HEARTSTOPPER!!!"
"Oh! Why didn't you say so?" I asked. I fished in my pocket for a tuppence for the paper, but when I looked up, the newsie had disappeared. In any case, the lil oracle was right. Olivia Colman only has maybe 5 short scenes in the eight episodes of Heartstopper but her presence is so magnetic and her character so sweet, it's impossible not to be obsessed.
Colman plays Sarah Nelson, mom to high school rugby star Nick (an affable and endearing Kit Connor), whose friendship with charming nerd Charlie Spring (Joe Locke, who is extraordinary) blossoms into a surprising romance. Heretofore, Nick has thought of himself as straight and his coming out as bisexual to himself makes up much of the conflict in the series. And while he's unsure if his friends will accept him, there's little doubt in the viewers' minds that his home life with his mom will be just fine. Why? Because that mom is Olivia Colman, she's literally always smiling, and every time we see her she's just contentedly playing her little Wordle game on her iPad. A chill icon! An ally in-waiting!
Mom Sarah (Olivia Colman) and son Nick (Kit Connor) enjoy some quality time. Photo credit: Netflix
One of the simple pleasures of Heartstopper is how breezily it goes by. No conflict lasts for more than a scene or two and it takes every opportunity to dive head-first into any available romance trope. There's a scene in the third episode where it starts to rain outside Charlie's window and we've barely had time to process the weather switch when then's a knock at the door, revealing a soaking wet Nick who has run all the way over to see him. Is it so easy? Yes. Is it still swoon-inducing? Yes. I mean, look the formula works. But a delightfully new part of that formula, at least in the realm of LGBTQ+ romance, is the role of the parent who is totally cool with everything that's happening, doesn't really have time to get into it and just wants the two crazy kids to be happy. Colman, lit from the glow of her iPad for much of the series and then lit from within by her own joy when Nick finally tells her about Charlie, is a perfect complement.
She's not the first, obviously, to play this kind of blithely loving parent in the genre. I think of this kind of role, actually, as the Jennifer Garner Part, probably because of her turn in 2018's Love, Simon.
These kinds of parents always seem to be staring thoughtfully at their children as they do other random bits of housework. They know but also they have, like, dishes to do. These parts are a lot of business, and more often than not they kind of hinge on the parents coming to a kind of understanding for themselves first. Going on an inner journey of acceptance. This is as much based in reality as other iterations--the parent who is staunchly against but gets over it, the parent who rejects and never really reconciles, et cetera. But Olivia Colman's Sarah is none of these. She very clearly doesn't have other parent business that keeps her useful and active at the periphery of the story. She maybe has a job? But we just see her at the iPad and once driving Nick back from an event. And then when the two finally sit down face to face, she's just unreservedly happy and it underscores her role in the story, which is neither obstacle nor accomplice but rather someone who is, like the viewers, cheering him along.
It feels spiritually similar to her delightfully campy role as Debbie Doonan in the BBC series Beautiful People, which aired two seasons in the early 2000s and is, sadly, not streaming anywhere. A frequently boozy bartender and married mother of two, Debbie's got way too much going on in her life to be caught up in her effete son Simon's shenanigans, as in this scene where a disciplinary meeting at the school becomes a competition between the principal and Debbie.
Debbie is so much bigger, personality-wise, than Sarah, but they share a genuine love and delight in their sons and, most importantly, have full agendas of their own.
I wondered initially why Colman would take a part as small as the one in Heartstopper, but here I am days after watching the series and I'm still thinking about her, and her iPad, and her smile. Heartstopper is all wish fulfillment, from minute one. And sometimes, particularly in LGBTQ+ YA and romance, that wish fulfillment extends to parents who totally get it and flutter around the edges of the story, taking photos and carpooling the leads to dates. But another kind of wish is a parent who has her own thing going on, has an inner life, and is just another citizen of the beautiful world the main characters are trying to step into.
That's the model that I was reaching for when creating the character Sheree Meredith in my new YA novel Kings of B'more (out 5/31 from Kokila Books). A contemporary gloss on Ferris Bueller's Day Off following two Black, queer 16-year-old best friends on their last day together in Baltimore, Kings of B'more is a platonic love story rather than a romance. But the roles of the parents were just as important because the basic questions remain the same--are they accepting, involved, obstacles, etc? And I wanted to find a way to add nuance and depth--what's beyond accepting, what does involved look like for a real person with a real job and life, what reads as an obstacle to one person and an opportunity to another?
Plot-wise, Sheree is an obstacle. The main characters, Harrison and Linus, are a little bit overprotected and over-watched by their parents. But from Sheree's perspective, they're 16-year-old Black kids in the real world, so they're not going to get the same passes as Ferris Bueller did to run roughshod through a city. But rather than making her and husband and Linus's parents strict disciplinarians who devote all of their waking hours to controlling their sons, I gave Sheree a location-tracking app that sets the stakes of the plot and then set her loose to go about her day. Another parent with an iPad and things to do. Like Sarah Nelson, Sheree loves her son and she likes her son but she's not obsessed with him and she doesn't need to be involved in the caper.
While the events of the book play out, Sheree's off at brunch and gospel choir rehearsal and then shows up at the climax. I won't spoil it but suffice it to say, her acceptance is never in question in the book, her love is never in question, and her interior life and her full calendar are never in question.
When I encounter these kind of parents in LGBTQ+ YA, TV shows, and movies--chill moms with their own thing going on--I get a little excited. Because it's important to show the parents who didn't have to wrestle with their own internal prejudices, or if they did they did it so far before the main characters came on the scene that it's no longer relevant. There's a matter-of-factness to these kind of parent-child relationships that is often characterized as aspirational or wish fulfillment, but is actually lived reality for some and potential for many.
Olivia Colman in Heartstopper plugging away at her iPad and crying happy tears when her onscreen son reveals he has a boyfriend is a simple gesture, not earth-shattering. But sometimes if we don't see the simple, the small, the delicate, the effortless, we forget that they're possible, too.
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Credits
Cover image: Netflix
Logo design: Pernell Quilon
Editorial assistant: Sean Simon
Avatar: Top Hat
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