“Playfulness is a very important part of filmmaking”: An interview with Heartstopper director Euros Lyn

Before his work on the LGBTQ+ coming-of-age series Heartstopper, award-winning Welsh director Euros Lyn acquired an impressive list of credits, from Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Black Mirror to Casualty, Happy Valley and Broadchurch. 

We spoke to Euros about the things he’s learned as a director, how inclusivity has improved in the film and TV industry, and the challenge of returning to the beloved story of Nick and Charlie for a second series. 

^{Euros Lyn photographed on set}

Why did you want to become a director, and how did you start your career?

When I was little, my dad worked in Theatre Gwynedd, a tiny regional theatre in North Wales. I remember losing myself in the plays and films I watched there and being captivated by the magic of stepping into a fictional world for an hour or two. After I finished studying drama at university, I got a job as a runner on a low-budget TV show in Wales. Eventually, I became a third assistant director and then a second. I learned more about the filmmaking process and showed the producers my shorts. One was looking for someone to direct the middle block of a children’s TV series for S4C in Welsh, which is my first language, and offered me the job.

You then directed several episodes of Welsh-language TV. How were those first experiences?

Sometimes, a new director is thrown in at the deep end, and the machine swallows them up or thwarts their creativity, and then people judge them harshly for it. I was very fortunate with my first project because I worked with a producer called Geraint Morris who worked on Casualty from the very beginning and was incredibly calm and supportive. I learned how to manage my time well on a low-budget production because you don’t have the luxury of shooting material that will end up on the cutting room floor. There’s very little time for reshoots and no margin for error. Also, when I started out, I didn’t edit the scene in my head before I shot it. I know now it’s much more useful to have a really clear idea of where the cut points will be in order to hit the emotional and narrative beats.

What was it like moving to network TV and working on well-established productions like Casualty, and an iconic series like Doctor Who?

I think there’s a paradox when showrunners employ directors to come onto a long-running show. They want the director to fit in with the house style, but they also want them to come in and bring something new and innovative. As a director, you learn how to push the boundaries and have as much stylistic aspiration as possible. When I worked on Casualty, they had almost never used handheld cameras, and I really pushed to shoot as much of an episode in a handheld style as I could. At the same time, there’s a negotiation involved, because you may have a crew who isn’t used to shooting with a particular technique and you don’t want to alienate the people you need to support you.

^{Euros Lyn on the set of Casualty}

Doctor Who was slightly different. It was a real adventure being involved in the first season. None of us knew what the reboot would be, including Russell T Davies. We were all discovering it in that moment. As a director, there was lots to explore and try out creatively because every episode is its own adventure and goes to a different place in space and time. Plus, in Wales at the time, we hadn’t really been making VFX-heavy, quick-turnaround television, so it was very exciting.

After Doctor Who, you then worked with Russell T. Davies again on the spin-off show Torchwood and queer comedy-drama Cucumber. How important are those connections?

I think every relationship you make as a director is of consequence. The really special relationships in my career are with people who respond to your creativity, like great writers whose vision inspires me as a director. Also, working relationships always have the potential to become more fruitful in the future. On the first season of Doctor Who, the runner who picked me up in the car is now a director that I recommended for a job, which he’s now doing. One of the runners on Broadchurch is now a producer, whose work I greatly admire. You’re not actively networking, because you want all of your relationships on set to be as positive as possible and you need a team of people who are actively collaborating, so those connections just come about naturally. 

^{Euros Lyn on the set of Cucumber}

You then directed episodes of dramas like Happy Valley and Broadchurch, to name a few. Is this a genre you prefer?

I think the projects I respond to the most are ones that dance across different genres; that have the wit and warmth to make you smile, but can also really kick you in the belly with some gruesome stuff. Happy Valley has moments like that, where there’s a brilliant conflict of tone. I think if you can make the audience laugh in one second and then weep or feel sick in the next, it almost makes those emotional reactions greater and more intense.

Later in your career, you directed a number of feature films. How did this compare to directing episodic TV?

I’ve often found in my career that it can be easy to establish yourself within a milieu and difficult to break out of it. It was a battle to prove I could move from Welsh-language television to network TV, and it was another battle to persuade a financier that I could make a feature film. My first feature was a micro-budget Welsh-language film called Library Suicides for BBC Films, Film Cymru and S4C, which we shot in three weeks with a small cast. It was really tough but very rewarding to feel so much ownership over a project, which you don’t quite have in television. But in terms of the day-to-day process of managing a set and shooting a schedule, they’re very similar.

What drew you to Heartstopper, and how did you approach adapting the graphic novels to the screen?

I first read the script and then discovered the graphic novels that Alice Oseman created. I had such an emotional response to the story, so it was incredibly rewarding to collaborate with Alice and realise her vision. I never imagined the series would touch so many people with such intensity. Not only did it impact a queer young audience, which is what we were aiming for, but older generations of queer people as well as straight people. That was incredible to see.

How did your previous experience prepare you for working as a lead director on Heartstopper and adapting the graphic novels?

Heartstopper was made by See-Saw, which is historically a film company, so they approached it like a 4-hour film split into 8 episodes, and wanted a director with a singular vision. So in some ways, my filmmaking experience prepared me the most. On a film set, the pressure to make everything perfect from different departments is enormous. There will always be something in a take that’s imperfect — it might be that a hair has fallen across an actor’s eye, or somebody’s forgotten to put the right number plate on a car — but with experience, you know all the tricks about getting around those things so that you’re not doing seven or eight takes to get something you can fix further down the line. Emotionally though, I feel like I’m 18 on the set of Heartstopper! I’d arrive back in my hotel after a day of shooting and catch myself in the mirror and think ‘Oh my god. Who’s that man with grey hair?’ I felt immersed in the world, like I was a teenager falling in love. That’s what drama does.

Heartstopper has become well-known for its inclusivity on and off-screen. How did you work with the cast and crew to achieve this?

Because it was a show for and about young queer people, we wanted to hire queer HoDs (or HoDs with an understanding of queer experience) wherever possible, and give opportunities to people in the early stage of their careers. Having a crew in line with the ethos of the show meant people really cared about it and went the extra mile. We also had involvement from Stonewall, who did some early work on inclusivity and LGBTQ+ issues with all of the crew. And Netflix was a great partner, as they have in-house training on inclusivity and accessibility that they require people to follow.

Of course, as a director, it was important to lead by example and set a tone of openness and respect. On a job I did when I was younger, the director pointed at my earring and said “Why do you wear an earring? Is it because you’re gay?” I remember going bright purple and being mortified. There is no way that would be acceptable behaviour now, and the industry has definitely changed for the better. On Heartstopper, there was a telephone number on the daily call sheet for people to report incidents of bullying or discrimination. Somebody did use it on the first season — the producer received the complaint anonymously, and then addressed it and fixed it. It proves that having those systems in place is essential.

^{Euros Lyn on the set of Heartstopper photographed by Sam Arbor}

Tell me more about rehearsing with the cast.

Very few of them had done any screen acting before, and I didn’t want to go straight to the text and wear the scenes a bit thin. I wanted to keep the themes as fresh as possible, so we steered away from rehearsing actual scenes and talked about the back stories of their characters. We talked about things like relationships, coming out and what the culture in a school is like. It was all from the character’s perspective, but my goal was that the cast would bring some of their own experiences so that they found something that connected them to their characters. We were rehearsing in a cricket club, so we played games on the cricket pitch because, of course, playfulness is a very important part of filmmaking. People dress up and they pretend to be somebody else, and as a director, you get to play with the audience and their emotions, so I always wanted to keep a sense of joy and fun.

What challenges did you face returning for Season 2?

It’s incredibly gratifying when people love what you’ve made, but it’s then also a huge responsibility to return to it. You don’t want it to be that difficult second album; you want it to be another roaring success. We wanted to do something new with it and move the narrative forward, not give audiences a rehashed version of season 1. Alice was really clear that she wanted season 2 to follow these characters as they explored the next stage of their maturity, and for it to be bolder and deal with new issues. The first season was about the simplicity of falling in love for the first time, but that honeymoon period can never last long because real life catches up with you. That's what we wanted to explore in season 2. 

^{Euros Lyn on the set of Heartstopper}

I was worried about Isaac because he goes on an internal journey to discover his asexuality. I think that’s always a huge challenge in drama — how do you turn a journey of self-discovery into dramatic action? — but I’m really happy with how it turned out. There are lots of teen shows that laugh at teen angst, because it’s so intense and it passes so quickly. We never wanted to do that, because actually, teen angst is an existential angst that carries on with us throughout our lives. I’m so proud of the performances from the actors, and their bravery for showing that depth of pain and going to those places.

Do you have any advice for aspiring directors, particularly those working outside of London?

Working in Wales at the start of my career was brilliant for me. There may be things you miss, like networking opportunities, but Cardiff is now a huge centre for producing television, and there are really great opportunities for trainees. The same is true of cities like Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast. But wherever you’re based, the most important thing for a new director to do is to keep practising your craft and telling the stories that burn in your heart, whether it’s through a 2-minute short or a 30-minute short. Then, when an opportunity comes along, you have something you can show to a producer that proves you’ve got the talent and the drive.

^{Euros Lyn operating a handheld camera on set.}

What are you working on next?

I’m making a feature film called The Radleys, which is based on the novel by Matt Haig. It’s a story about a middle-class, middle-England family who have a dark secret — which is that they're abstinent vampires.

Heartstopper is available to watch now on Netflix in the UK. Find out more about Euros Lyn and his work.