Sebastian Croft is getting used to his newfound Celebrity Traitors fame. Last weekend, he was recognised at a petrol station by one person at the pump, and then another person waiting in their car. “And then literally the whole garage,” he says, mock-acting out being surrounded. “I was just like, ‘Hi, everyone. I’m gonna go now.’ So it is strange.”
It’s not that the 24-year-old actor and musician – Bash Croft to his friends, his fellow Traitors castmates, and those who will listen to his very promising forthcoming debut EP The Great Forever – isn’t used to attention. Croft was acting in the West End aged nine, cast in Game of Thrones at 14 and a star of Netflix’s queer coming-of-age series Heartstopper from 2022. But those shows, he says, “have a fairly specific audience, or it’s just people my age. This is the first time where I’ve had 50-year-old dads being like, ‘Nice work down that toilet.'”
Ah yes, episode four’s haunted hut mission: did he actually consider that his first introduction to many people across the nation would be diving headfirst down a filthy toilet into poo-like gunk to retrieve lost jewellery, as he did so gamefully? “Honestly, the best introduction I could hope for,” he smiles.
Croft is under the strictest orders from the BBC to not divulge any details about his time in the castle (his publicist sits in during our interview at their central London office just to make sure) – not his thoughts on Richard E Grant’s now legendary faux pas (“I will say Richard is a legend, and I think he will definitely never be forgotten,”) or even if he enjoyed himself, though he certainly looks like he did, and seems sure to be the show’s breakout star. “I’ve grown up being in things where you’ve had to keep secrets,” he says; when he was cast as the younger version of Sean Bean’s Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, he couldn’t tell a soul for six months.
Croft is a fan of ‘The Traitors’ and is watching ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ along with everyone else (Photo: Euan Cherry/Studio Lambert/BBC)But he does admit to being wary of being exposed when going into the castle. “It was scary because it’s the first time that it’s really me being me, rather than playing a character.” He’s also surprised that he’s become something of a meme to his many followers (1.6 million on Instagram alone), who are playfully joshing about his running during one of the missions. “I didn’t realise I ran like that,” he smiles. “Now whenever I post anything, most of the comments are just like this Pirates of the Caribbean thing of me running.” For the most part though, he’s watching along the same as everybody else. “I’m such a massive fan of the show. The fact that I’m watching it and then I’m also in it is bizarre.”
Croft is charming and eagerly chatty about literally anything else, particularly his long journey to releasing The Great Forever. Given his acting background, he says his pivot to music surprised many. “People were a bit like, ‘What do you mean you’re going to put your music out?'”
Croft caught the performing bug very young – “I would perform to half an eaten packet of Wotsits… I’ve been like that since the age of two” – growing up in a market town just outside Oxford with his English mother and Greek-Cypriot father, who sent him aged seven for weekend acting lessons at Stagecoach. At nine, he was cast in the lead role of a West End touring production of Oliver! directed by Bafta-nominated Rupert Goold, he later landed West End roles in Les Misérables and Matilda.
But Croft has been secretly writing songs from before the age of 10. They never saw the light of day, partly because the acting became all-encompassing, but also due to how diary-like his lyrics were. “I’d always thought of them as an outlet. They weren’t really for other people to hear. They were very much for me.” He says many songs were written as “an escape from school” during the period he “started figuring out my sexuality”.
Croft had a tough time at his private boarding school outside Oxford, quitting at 16 after being outed in what he calls “a weirdly old-school experience” by a classmate he’d had a secret relationship with. (It was an experience that strangely mirrored his storyline in Heartstopper, in which his character Ben had a secret, deeply damaging relationship with Joe Locke’s protagonist Charlie.)
In ‘Heartstopper’, Croft played Ben Hope, who had a secret relationship with protagonist Charlie (Photo: Samuel Dore/Netflix)“I had a really difficult few years,” he says. “I don’t blame the other boy who did it, because he was obviously just also trying to navigate the fact that he was getting chipped for being gay. But it was a really lonely and difficult time in my life. I would leave school and be an actor and be doing the thing I loved the most, and be with other like-minded people, and feel so liberated in myself, and then I go back to school and be bullied and ostracised.”
His experience of coming out publicly, during the first season run of Heartstopper, was a much nicer and more compassionate experience. And given he was starring in a teen college drama, a fittingly full-circle kind of reclamation. “It was this chance that most people don’t get. I got to go back and redo what would have been my sixth form, but with the most supportive group of people, doing the thing I loved in a show that celebrates that.” Croft now runs the charity foundation Queer Was Always Here, co-founded with the actor Connor Jessup.
Encouraged by the response to clips of songs he posted to Instagram around lockdown, Croft began to see a path to releasing music. But the catalyst for The Great Forever’s seven tracks was the end of Croft’s first proper relationship in 2023, rumoured to be with his Heartstopper co-star Joe Locke. It was his first heartbreak and cut deep: a three-year relationship was ended with a phone call while Croft was performing in a production of Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles in Chichester.
“It hurts, but also the truth is there’s not a good way to deliver news like that,” says Croft now. “For a long time, I was angry about the how. But the truth is, the thing that hurts is the why, which is the reason. When they reach the point where ‘I’ve decided my life is more interesting when I don’t have you in it’, that could not hurt more.”
Croft poured his heartbreak and conflicted post-breakup emotions into songs he’s been tweaking for three years as he’s searched for his own voice and a style that didn’t just ape his current favourites (Chappell Roan, Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo). “The EP has matured and found its footing as I have as an artist.”
Croft is ambitious for his musical career and hopes to play at Glastonbury one day (Photo: Dave Benett/Getty)It has made for some bracingly honest, very modern-sounding indie-pop music, mixing electronic sheen with confessional acoustic singer-songwriting: “Heartbreak State of Mind” wrestles with never really knowing if you were cheated on but needing to move on for your own sake. “That person definitely moved on very quickly but I don’t want to feel angry anymore,” says Croft now. “I’m bored of feeling upset or hurt.” The catchy dream-pop of “Pretty People” details the gut punch of seeing your ex living their best life on social media. “In that gap when we’re feeling insecure, so much turmoil can exist,” he says. “But even though it’s melancholic, I said, ‘I’m gonna write a song that I can dance to.'”
The Natasha Bedingfield-inspired “Good Light”, out today, is about sleeping with your ex. “You know it’s not the right thing to do. I never left feeling like that was the right thing to do. But then next time it comes around as a possibility, you’re like, ‘Maybe it’s good this time!’ But it’s like playing the end of a film on repeat.”
On the lovely, pining “Tokyo”, Croft sums up the confusion when he sings: “F**k you, but I hope you’re alright.” Since his debut concert at London’s Lower Third last December, it’s already become a live favourite. “Hearing everyone scream that line, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is amazing.’!
Croft has since supported Lewis Capaldi at Hyde Park; I sense he has got big ambitions for his music? “I do,” he says. He couldn’t have set his sights higher: to headline Glastonbury. He’s been inspired by watching the Coldplay documentary and how they went from unknown to headliners in four years, as well as seeing Olivia Dean at Worthy Farm. “And then cut forward a year and a half, and she’s suddenly the biggest thing in the world. I just know how I am, and I’m not going to be able to do this a little bit. I’m going to want to go all the way,” he says. “So yeah, headline Glastonbury 2032!”
The single ‘Good Light’ is out tomorrow. ‘The Great Forever EP’ is out in November
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