Netflix star’s Festival Theatre debut

Sebastian Croft – known to millions through Netflix’s Heartstopper – makes his Chichester Festival Theatre debut in 4000 Miles which runs in the Minerva Theatre from Thursday, May 4-Saturday, June 10.

And with perfect timing, the production comes hot on the heels of the announcement that the second series of Heartstopper will be screened this August. 4000 Miles is also Sebastian's first time on the stage in eight years. The last time was in Trevor Nunn's King John when he was 13 years old.

“I am playing Leo in the play who arrives having cycled 4,000 miles and arrives at his grandmother's apartment in New York and he stays for three weeks.

"We've got these two people who are both refusing to move on and refusing to change. They are living together and helping each other to understand the loss that they have both had in their lives but it is a really gentle play about loss. It unfolds so gently. There's no big twist. It's a play really about setting these characters in this situation as we learn more and more about them.”

Sebastian comes to it on the back of the huge success of the first series of Heartstopper and with the second series to be released this summer: “It has been massive.

"It was one of those shows where you just didn't really know how it was going to go but it has proved so uplifting and so joyous for people, especially for people who have been starved of queer stories. It is actually quite unique in that it is such a sweet and simple young love story that happens to be queer love but it is such an infectious show you just can't help but fall under its spell.”