Agatha All Alongside’s Joe Locke Is Thrilled to Be Enjoying a Campy Marvel Witch

Whereas Marvel followers nonetheless don’t know precisely who Joe Locke is enjoying in Agatha All Along—formally his character’s title is “Teen,” although hypothesis has narrowed it down a lot more than that—the Heartstopper breakout could be very assured about what he’s bringing to the desk in the WandaVision spin-off. In a brand new interview, he talked about enjoying a queer character within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and what it means to him each personally and professionally.

Chatting with Variety, Locke says Agatha All Alongside has made him much less involved about being typecast as a homosexual character, as a result of the function he has is so complicated and multi-faceted. “The present by no means shies away from his queerness, however it’s not a defining function of his character,” he advised the commerce. “It’s only one layer of him as an individual.”

Elsewhere within the article, Agatha Harkness herself, Kathryn Hahn, recollects how quickly after she began working with Locke she was impressed along with his sense of self. “He corrected me early on, as a result of I mentioned, ‘’hese witches and this beautiful wizard,’” she recalled to Selection. “And he was like, ‘No, we’re all witches.’ That actually caught with me.”

Although Locke considers being in a Marvel sequence “probably the most pinch me factor,” he’s additionally able to face naysayers—even fellow members of the LGBTQ+ group—who’ve taken from the Agatha All Alongside trailers that his efficiency as “Teen” (or whoever he finally ends up being) can be a “campy homosexual stereotype.” He defined why that didn’t sit proper with him.

“It actually aggravated me as a result of I used to be like, ‘You’ll be able to’t ask for genuine casting after which be upset when you’ve got a camp character’ … I’m totally conscious that the Marvel fandom is way much less good than the Heartstopper fandom,” he mentioned. “There’s going to be lots of people that simply hate every thing concerning the character and every thing about what I’ve performed with it, and I simply should be OK with that.”

And if Agatha All Alongside contains musical numbers, as has been rumored, Locke’s theatrical skills will are available further helpful; earlier this yr, he starred as Tobias Ragg—following Stranger Issues‘ Gaten Matarazzo—within the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Road.

Agatha All Alongside, which additionally stars Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Patti LuPone, Debra Jo Rupp, Emma Caulfield Ford, and Aubrey Plaza, was created by Jac Schaeffer (Black Widow, WandaVision). It should run a complete of 9 episode, and can debut with a two-episode premiere September 18 on Disney+.

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