When Jackson Connor read the script for Tip Toe, the devastating new state of the nation drama from Russell T Davies (Queer as Folk, It’s a Sin), it felt like a lifeline. “I was going through quite a difficult time because I’d been trying to break into the industry for a while,” the 23-year-old actor tells NME. “After Covid and the writers’ strike, there really wasn’t a lot of work around. I just had this overbearing feeling that I was doing something wrong.”
Few actors wouldn’t grab an RTD script with both hands – Tip Toe‘s cast is led by Alan Cumming and The Walking Dead’s David Morrissey – but Connor felt the pivotal role of George Goss was meant for him. “I said to my friend, ‘If I don’t get this [part], there really is something wrong with me, because at one point in my life, I was this guy, ‘” he says.
George Goss, a closeted 16-year-old from Manchester, is the accidental catalyst of Davies’ unflinching thriller. “I mean, I came out when I was 15, so I went through the same kind of things as George,” the actor says. Speaking on Zoom from his family home in a small town near Birmingham, Connor is clearly passionate about the series and pretty relaxed for someone new to interviews. He’s fitting this one around his day job as a dental assistant.
‘Tip Toe’s Jackson Connor. CREDIT: Kate McDonald
In the opening scene of Tip Toe, which is streaming now on Channel 4, we see middle-aged Leo Struthers (Cumming) hanging dead from a lampost outside his house. Looking up at him is Clive Goss (Morrissey), George’s dad, who’s breathing heavily as his wife Marie (Pooky Quesnel) calls him a “monster”.
The story then spools back to 10 days earlier when Leo, who runs a gay bar on Manchester’s famous Canal Street, gets locked out in his boxers following a one-night-stand. Needing to call his friend with the spare key, Leo knocks on the door of his next-door neighbour Clive, an uptight electrician he’s never had much to do with. The chain of events that follows is frequently chilling, tragically avoidable and, even with the show’s extreme ending, all too believable.
It really escalates when Clive discovers that Leo has texted dating advice to George, who’s being ghosted by his first boyfriend, but isn’t “out” to his parents. “I think Leo sees George as himself when he was younger. And for George, Leo is what he could be if he grew up to be happy and open,” Connor says. “Leo’s doing nothing wrong by messaging him, but there’s always this thing where you’re thinking, ‘Oh, don’t say that, because it looks bad.”
Frustrated with his lot in life and perhaps confused about his own sexuality, Clive reaches for an age-old homophobic trope – namely, that Leo must be a predator who’s trying to “turn” his son gay. Davies, who created two of the UK’s defining LGBTQ+-themed TV dramas, 1999’s Canal Street fairytale Queer As Folk and 2021’s moving HIV/AIDS eulogy It’s A Sin, has said he wrote Tip Toe because the world is “sliding back” on queer rights.
“Anything that’s gonna represent people and make them feel seen, especially in times like these, that’s what’s really interesting to me”
“I think Russell wanted to start a conversation and face people with an ugly truth,” Connor says. “Like so many of his programmes, Tip Toe is holding a mirror up to society.” The series is certainly timely given that Stonewall now describes “rising levels of hate crime” as “a serious issue for the LGBTQ+ community”. Between March 2024 and March 2025, there were more than 18,000 hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation and over 3,000 trans-related hate crimes in England and Wales. Many more go unreported due to mistrust in the police and fear of being “outed” to family members and co-workers.
The anti-LGBTQ+ violence that drives Tip Toe‘s final episode isn’t limited to the lynching of Leo. In another gasp-inducing scene, conflicted George hurls a cruel transphobic slur at Zee (Iz Hesketh), a young trans woman who welcomed him into her queer chosen family. “It’s brutal to watch and it was brutal to shoot, especially because I’m such good friends with Iz,” Connor says.
George spends the episode code-shifting by trying to trade banter with a gaggle of straight lads watching football at his house. “At one point in my life, I definitely would have related to that thing of putting on a very different persona to fit in with people you’re not necessarily ever going to be friends with,” Connor says.
He then corrects himself slightly. “I mean, even now [I can do that],” he adds. “For example, I went to watch the England World Cup match last week at a sports bar in my hometown, which is quite a conservative place, and the bar was full of very rowdy football fans – just like in the show. I actually had a really great time, but there’s always that element of ‘I need to tone it down’ or, like, ‘straight it up’ to fit in here.”
“There was this real weight on my shoulders to really do the character and the themes justice”
Connor says the reaction to Tip Toe has been “pretty incredible” since the series finale premiered a few weeks ago. “I’ve had a lot of messages on Instagram from people saying how much they related to George’s story, especially the texting scene where he opens up to Leo about everything,” he says. “I think it’s something that every gay kid goes through.”
The show’s word-of-mouth success is also boosting Connor’s profile. He still has his day job, where he’s “really lucky” to get time off for auditions, but he’s now fielding interest from various agents and managers. And when Connor went to see Harry Styles at Wembley Stadium last week, his mum heard some fans saying: “Is that him from Tip Toe?”
Alan Cumming and David Morrissey in ‘Tip Toe’ CREDIT: Channel 4
The series is surely a breakout moment for Connor, who cut his teeth in local am-dram productions. When he was eleven, he landed the lead in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Musical – “yes, with songs!” – and became “obsessed” with acting. Though he opted not to take the drama school route “because it didn’t feel like the place for me”, Connor took enough acting classes to land his first agent as a teenager.
But before portraying George Goss, his only significant screen role came in Phoenix Rise, a BBC kids’ drama set in a Midlands high school. Connor played Sam, whom he describes as a “gay mean girl”, from 2023-2024. “He was a lot of fun to play, but there wasn’t a lot of serious substance to the character,” Connor says. “So when I got George, it felt like there was this real weight on my shoulders to really do the character and the themes justice.”
In the future, he’d love to play a cowboy and appear in a period drama – in fairness, Connor already has the hair for it – but Tip Toe has whet his appetite for sociopolitical storytelling. “Anything with a message, anything that’s gonna represent people and make them feel seen, especially in times like these, that’s what’s really interesting to me,” he says. “But I’m just so excited for what’s to come. This really does feel like a turning point for me.”
