Caleb Hearon Has a Message for Queer Midwesterners: Don’t Move to New York

“If you’re not enjoying my answers, you can just say something,” jokes Caleb Hearon shortly after we hop back on the phone. Due to technical difficulties, the 29-year-old comedian, actor, and podcaster was just cut off mid-sentence while in the throes of recounting his coming-out story. “In high school, in my very small Missouri town, I found another gay guy, and we started kind of hooking up. He was like, ‘I want to come out.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I cannot come out in this town.’ I was really jealous of him. I thought he was really brave. I ended up not coming out until my freshman year in college, when I had moved away. That was my journey.”

That arc may be familiar to any queer person who grew up in a compact, conservative town. It’s also incredibly similar to the experience Hearon’s character goes through in the Max romantic comedy Sweethearts, directed by Dollface creator Jordan Weiss and streaming on Thanksgiving. Hearon steals every scene he’s in as Palmer, a newly out would-be college freshman coming home after his gap year in Paris to show off his fabulous novel life to his hometown besties, Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) and Ben (Nico Hiraga). Jamie and Ben, meanwhile, are in the process of breaking up with their respective significant others and figuring out if their best friendship is actually a When Harry Met Sally situation.

While Palmer may initially seem like a stereotypical “gay best friend” role, Sweethearts subverts expectations and takes Palmer on a wild journey of his own. “This character truly feels like his own developed person,” Hearon says. “It felt like they actually cared about telling this gay story in a way that was authentic, and I thought it was really special.”

Palmer’s lines aren’t all one-liners and zingy bon mots, although he does have plenty of both. “He’s not just a gay kid trying to figure out who he is in the world as a gay person—he’s also fat,” says Hearon, matter-of-fact. In one montage, Palmer tries on an assortment of outfits and accessories as he psychs himself up for a party. “I don’t have the privilege of minimalism,” he says to his reflection. “That is for thin people.”

“I really shaded a lot of his insecurities and his movements and his experiences through that lens,” says Hearon. “Coming of age as anybody in a fat body is really weird and difficult in a society that doesn’t super love fat people.”

Body image isn’t the only thing Palmer is wrestling with in Sweethearts. “I think a lot of young queer people from places like Ohio or Missouri, one of the first things we experiment with when we decide to come out is elitism,” says Hearon. “By virtue of being different than everybody where I’m from—but not believing that I’m worse than them—does that inherently mean that I’m better than all of them? I think you have to pass through the valley of the shadow of elitism on your way to being a healthy out person.”

With the lend a hand of fairy gay-mothers played by Severance star Tramell Tillman and Fire Island’s Joel Kim Booster, Palmer is able to pass through that valley and find queer community in his own hometown. It’s something that Hearon can personally relate to. “I’m from a real small town in rural Missouri. I experienced my ideas about Missouri being a no-good place that I should just abandon.” After his dad passed away a few years ago, Hearon reevaluated his relationship to his hometown. “I just re-fell in love with it. I was like, ‘Wait, I love this place. It’s so beautiful here. It’s so easy.’”

Now Hearon has a house in Kansas City and splits his time between Missouri and New York. “There really are gay people who live very happy, exciting, successful, creative, artistic, interesting lives in the middle of the country,” he says. “I hope that some queer person in the middle of the country who’s wondering if they can have an interesting life where they are or if they have to move to prohibitively expensive, faraway places like New York and LA—I hope they watch the movie and at least some part of them feels like they don’t have to do that.”