William Gao on Heartstopper, Fusion Music, and Newfound Fame

Mixed Asian Media - May 7, 2022

By Hayley Palmer

Being a long-time fan of Alice Oseman’s webcomic Heartstopper, I’ve closely — my friends might say obsessively — followed the progress of the Netflix adaptation since the open casting calls were announced. If you haven’t had a chance to binge it yet, Heartstopper follows teenagers Nick and Charlie as their growing friendship turns into something more. William plays Tao Xu, Charlie’s protective best friend who struggles with change as Nick and Charlie get closer. 

It was a pleasure to see William bring such a familiar character from page to screen and even more of a pleasure to chat with him over Zoom. We talked about making music, a potential season two, and yes, his character’s hairstyle. 

Heartstopper is streaming now on Netflix!

Can you think of the first time you felt represented by someone on screen, in a book or on stage? 

I remember the exact moment. It was a play at the National Theatre called The Great Wave, and the entire cast was East Asian or British East Asian. It also had — who's now become kind of like a mentor to me — Rosalind Chao, who's an actress in the States.

And, at the time, I just knew, I'm being represented on stage, and it was probably the best play I've ever seen. So probably that, and it’s so cool that now, I get to have Rosalind as a mentor for me. She gives me advice and things here and there, but that was the moment.

What was your experience like growing up mixed-race and Asian in London?

You know what, it was kind of weird if I'm honest. I am half Chinese and half English. My mom's from China. She moved here when she was in her 20s, and I grew up in a quite traditional kind of setting. My school was a quite traditional, very English school, and I kind of had this weird thing where it just felt a bit strange.

I felt kind of out of place a lot, and I didn't feel like I quite belonged a lot of the time. Recently I've come to terms with that, and I've kind of celebrated it now, and I'm very, very happy because of my ethnicity. Strange but kind of cool and weird.

I think I read in an article; do you also speak a Chinese dialect? 

Yeah, I can speak a bit of Mandarin. I'm learning Mandarin. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent, but I'd say, you know, I can survive in China.

Let's talk Heartstopper. Personally, I’ve kept up with the comics for years, so I watched the show as soon as it came out; it was wonderful. It's gained insane popularity since its release a few weeks ago. Did you expect this level of popularity? 

No, no, I mean, I've been shitting bricks since it came out. It's crazy. But it's great! It's great.

There's so much love for the show, and there's so many people that are really inspired and feel represented and celebrated. I had no idea it was going to go this big, but, you know, here we are.

How has it been these past few weeks? How have you been dealing with it all?

You know, I’ve been working a lot. So, I've been at home. I've just kind of hidden away. I kind of deleted social media for a bit. I’ve been hiding for a bit and concentrating on my work. I'm doing a lot of music at the moment. I'm releasing an album next week and yeah, I've kind of been hiding, but at the same time, it's all happening. So I've kind of been aware. I've also walked my dog a lot.

What drew your attention to the Heartstopper open casting call? 

I got it through my youth theatre. I was doing a lot at the National Youth Theatre, and the casting call came through, and it was like “Tao, 15-year-old British East Asian.” And I was like, yeah, let's try for it.

And this was your first on-screen role, right? 

First on-screen role. Yeah. It was different. 

Wow, you just jumped into an insanely popular show.

Yeah. I really found I have no idea what I'm doing.

That’s OK. Fake it ‘til you make it.

Fake it ‘til you make it! I'm completely blagging it. I don't know why people think that I've got my stuff together.

What was your favorite scene to film or your favorite memory?

My favorite scene to film was a scene with Kit Connor — who plays Nick Nelson — in the last episode. I'm very good friends with him off-screen. He's a really, really good friend of mine. We just had a great time, and we had that trust in the scene, and we just got it done. And we had such a buzz, I had such a buzz after filming that. So probably that scene.

I love that scene as well. What scene or storyline are you excited to potentially explore if (fingers crossed) there's a second season?

Well, if there’s a season two, I think Tao and Elle, their storyline will blossom in a lovely way. And I think their love story really comes to the forefront of a lot of things. I'm excited to explore that with the wonderful Yasmin Finney [who plays Elle] and with the rest of the cast.

I think what's nice about the show is it gave a lot more storylines to Tao, Elle, Darcy, and Tara. So, I’m very excited to see that.

Yeah definitely, they really started to balance things out.

Was it challenging bringing to life a character from pre-existing material, or did you find it helped you?

Ooh, good question. Yeah, it gave me a lot of inspiration. It gave me a lot of ground to kind of work on. So Alice, the wonderful writer of this universe — she created a universe, that’s mad — she said you can be free with it, you know? Make it your own. Don't feel restricted too much to the books. So I was kind of liberated at the same time as kind of following Tao on the page. But I read all the books and stuff, and went off there and then kind of made my own from it.

Were you in school while you were filming? How did you balance both school and work? 

Yeah. The answer is I didn't. I was meant to be doing my A-Levels. I did my A-Levels during the shoot actually. It was lockdown anyway, and we had a weird year. I mean, we weren't in school really.

There was one day I did a three-hour Chinese writing exam thing and a listening one after, and then I drove straight from there, one hour, to the film set, and I started shooting in the afternoon. That was probably the most nuts day I've ever lived.

It's surreal because you put so much focus into both things. You know when you're writing an exam, like time flies, and the same with the film set. So it was this weird thing where I was putting so much of my brain into like these two things. It was nuts, but I was lucky. I managed to get both done and I was happy with my results.

That sounds insane. I also finished my last year of high school last year, and I don't know how I would've done that plus an actual, full-time job essentially. 

Yeah. It's kinda nuts.

So you're part of a music group, correct?

Yeah, me and my sis [Olivia Hardy]. We’re in a band called the Wasia Project.

What instruments do you play, and how'd you land on that name? 

Yeah, this is very relevant. I learned piano from the age of four, like all good Chinese kids, and my sister the violin. And we trained classically. I did a lot of choral singing, I did a lot of music. I went to a music school basically. Olivia does a lot of music as well. In 2018, we formed this project called the Wasia Project because we're both mixed-race. And it's white and Asian, and I think Wasia was a good kind of sum up.

And the reason we call it Wasia is because our music is like fusion music. So we've fused bedroom pop with East Asian music with jazz, also with classical, and we have so many influences that we draw from in our music, and we explore that through the project. I should probably plug it, we've got an EP coming out on the 10th of May called How Can I Pretend? And you can find that on Spotify, on Apple Music, on anywhere. That's coming out really soon. And that's a fusion again, of celebrating our mixed-race heritage.

Like you said, your music is a big blend of genres. Are there specific musicians you're inspired by and other genres you'd want to try out?

Definitely. The opportunities are endless to explore different types of music. I'd say my biggest influences are artists like Jacob Collier, who himself is mixed-race. Also bands like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and then everything up to modern times, you know?

I would love to explore working with a rap artist, or like a rapper in that scene because there's so much of that in this area of London I live in, and it's something I've never explored in my life. So that's probably what I'd love to collaborate on next with someone.

Yeah, that sounds cool! So you said you have classical music training. How did you get into making this kind of music? That's not quite as classical as your origins would be. 

I reached an epiphany. I was walking out of my classical piano teacher's room — and I love my classical teacher so much, he was great. But on the grand piano, we were studying some Chopin, it was really intense. And I walked out, and in the other room, there was some jazz happening. There was like a heavy, big band playing…I think it was “Fly Me to the Moon” and there was like a singer and they were doing it! They were doing jazz! I had just done two hours of Chopin, and I was like, “Man, I want to do some of that”.

So that was the moment where it kind of clicked. And I was like, I want to do some fusion. I want to do some other things. It's not all just classical, even though classical is really beautiful.

I also took the classical to jazz route.

Really? Do you play?

I do, I play piano and violin.

Lovely.

Classic Chinese parenting I think. 

We’ve all been there. You know, it's always the way.

So, what can we look forward to hearing on your new EP? 

On the new EP you can look forward to hearing a very excited, upbeat tune that makes you feel like you're flying into space. It can make you feel in love. It can make you feel quite sad, but it's got a bit of everything. Got a lot of piano, got some band numbers, it's got a mixture of everything.

It's me and my sister’s first songs that we wrote when we were 14. We're fed up with them. Now we want to just get them out in the world so we can move on from that shit. And that's what the aim of EP is.

Sounds great! All right, last two questions. These ones are a little more casual. I saw in an interview that you've read several of Alice Oseman's other books, other than Heartstopper. I love their books, so I've got to ask which ones you've read.

I love Nick and Charlie. I kind of fell off a bike, and I hurt my neck. So I thought something was wrong with my neck. I lay in bed, and I just got the book out and I read it like that [arms straight up above my head], I remember. And by the end my neck didn't hurt. It turned out that I was absolutely fine, I was just being dramatic.

I read Nick and Charlie. I'm reading Solitaire at the moment, actually, and I'm loving it. It's great. Tori is just an amazing character, and there's endless kinds of possibilities you can have with that character. So I've also read all the Heartstopper comics, obviously. Can't wait for the next volume.

Final question. This one, my friends begged me to ask this. So, have you seen the “discourse” surrounding Tao’s hairstyle on social media? 

Yeah.

What was your reaction upon seeing the hair? Did you love it? Or were you not so in love with it? 

No comment [bursts out laughing]. I know there's a lot of talk about it, but you know, it's bold, it's brave. 

It adds character. 

Yeah. [laughs]

That’s it! So, thank you so much for talking to me. It was wonderful.

Hayley Palmer is a media studies student living in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She spends her free time sitting around with friends, re-reading the same books, and playing and coaching ice hockey. Hayley makes all sorts of art, from digital illustration to photography to collages. You can find her work on Instagram.