Holden Sheppard’s Gay Coming-Of-Age Masterpiece ‘Invisible Boys’ Comes To Life On Screen

Holden Sheppard’s award-winning debut novel Invisible Boys was beloved by LGBTQIA+ readers the instant it was released in 2019, capturing the raw, unfiltered experiences of young gay men growing up in rural communities. 

Now, the story is set to reach an even wider audience as it makes the leap to television, with the highly anticipated series premiering on Stan Australia. 

The story follows four teenage boys living in Geraldton in Western Australia, all of whom are grappling with their sexuality and differing circumstances.

Charlie (Joseph Zada), an angry punk, struggles with being outed after sleeping with a married man, while the affable Zeke (Aydan Calafiore) is suffocated by his deeply religious, homophobic Italian family. Rising footy star Hammer (Zach Blampied) is at a crossroads between his career and his family, and Matt (Joe Klocek) attempts to find his own happiness outside the confines of the family farm.

Audiences resonated with these troubled-yet-beautiful characters – their stories are familiar to many of us. Now, the television adaptation has brought them to life in a beautiful, raw, gritty and turbulent story that is unmissable viewing. 

Speaking to Star Observer, Holden reflects on the deeply personal journey his debut novel has taken him. He first began writing Invisible Boys in 2017, amidst the turbulence of the same-sex marriage plebiscite in Australia. 

“I was halfway through the book and had Zeke and Charlie discussing, ‘Do you think we’ll ever be able to get married?’” Sheppard recalls. “By the time I finished it, we could. So the whole thing actually changed along the way.” 

Despite winning several awards, Sheppard reveals the book was repeatedly rejected by major publishers. “One publisher even said, ‘We’ve just got the right to get married; what we’re looking for now is happy gay stories. We don’t want this dark stuff anymore’,” says Sheppard.

Thankfully, Fremantle Press saw the importance of Sheppard’s story and took a chance on his debut novel. 

The book has since found an enduring audience, with its sales defying industry norms. “Most books have a three-month shelf life, but Invisible Boys has just kept finding new people,” Sheppard says. It wasn’t long before talks began for a television adaptation, which then went on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But it was worth the wait. 

Authenticity in Stan Australia’s adaptation of Invisible Boys was non-negotiable for Sheppard. His main stipulations? That the show be filmed in WA, that it authentically portrays different types of gay men, and that it not shy away from depicting genuine realities of gay adolescence – including sex.

“The book is loved and valued because it shows the messiness of gay sex,” Sheppard says. “I’m really glad the show went there. So often, the camera will pan away. This show doesn’t.” 

The sex scenes in the show are rough, raw, sometimes even hard to watch – but all offer a realistic reflection of discovering sex and sexuality as an adolescent. The television adaptation does not seek to sanitise its characters’ sexual experiences, and Sheppard is bracing for some strong reactions – particularly from straight audiences.

“I wonder how many of them are going to be covering their eyes and freaking out,” he laughs. “I think they’ll watch it with eyes wide open and be like, ‘Do they really hook up on apps with married men? Do they really go to public toilets?’”

The show’s cast has been widely praised, with Sheppard particularly excited about the casting of Pia Miranda as Zeke’s homophobic mother.

“It’s so unsettling seeing her play a villain,” he says. “We all love her from Looking for Alibrandi, but here she’s just terrifying. Every time she’s on screen, you’re like, ‘What’s she going to do next?’”

The four lead actors Aydan Calafiore, Joe Klocek, Zach Blampied, and Joseph Zada bring Sheppard’s multifaceted protagonists to life with moving authenticity. 

“They each brought something real to their roles,” he says. “Joseph as Charlie is raw and angsty, Aidan’s Zeke has this cheeky vulnerability, Zach makes Hammer much more likeable than in the book, and Joe as Matt is just breathtaking.”

For Sheppard, the four boys represent different aspects of himself at various stages of his life. “I think there’s like this really bizarre symbiotic thing between me and these four characters that I’ll probably never be able to get away from, because to some extent, when I wrote the four boys I feel like I wrote myself into existence.”

“I was most like Zeke growing up—hiding everything. I wrote this book from a place of ‘fuck everyone’—I wasn’t going to be a good Catholic boy anymore. I was going to say exactly how I felt.”

Each of the four main characters experience different stages of the coming out process in Invisible Boys – and Holden shared his deeply personal experience of his own coming out. One of six children in a Catholic, Sicilian family, he discovered a book on puberty as a child which advised him, “You might be briefly attracted to the same sex, but don’t worry, it’s just the hormones, it will go away.” 

So when he started feeling things for footy players and the well-toned Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, he expected they would go away — except it, of course, didn’t.

“I got progressively more self-loathing and depressed, and tried to try to pray the gay away. I really didn’t want to be gay,” he recalls. “Ultimately I ended up wanting to leave the planet – thankfully I didn’t.”

Through reaching out to a mental health service, he found the help he needed – and soon after, he met someone that changed his life. At university, Holden met Raphael Farmer – his now husband. “I love everything about him,” he smiles. 

“I think readers of the book and viewers of the series will be able to understand Charlie and Matt because there’s a bit of Raphael and I in their dynamic. I met Raphael at uni, and he was this guy who would just talk about being gay and liking Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] or Xena: Warrior Princess and listening to Britney Spears, and he just wouldn’t care.”

“He just didn’t care what anyone thought. It was just the fact that he didn’t give a shit. And here I was, this bogan who thought I was tougher, maybe, like, ‘I can’t tell anyone I’m gay’.”

But as the two pursued their relationship, Holden found the peace he needed and felt the time was right to tell his parents and family. It wasn’t all roses, Holden sharing that he lost friends along the way – but his parents were both supportive. “My mum thought I was going to tell her I got a girl pregnant,” he laughs. 

“I told [my father] at the shed, where he keeps his machines for work. He… walked around the side of the table towards me, and then just literally opened his arms and was like, ‘you’re my son, I love you’.”

“That acceptance meant a lot to me when I’d come from a place of not wanting to be alive and thinking, you know, my dad’s going to hate me for being gay. He was fine with it and he met Raphael; the first time he met him he gave him a Collingwood beanie to be like, ‘welcome to the family’.”

It’s this raw, honest storytelling, weaving his personal lived experiences into his extraordinary yet down-to-earth prose, that has broadly resonated with LGBTQIA+ readers. It has resonated through all of Holden’s work, with his second book, The Brink being equally well-received, and this third book, King Of Dirt, due out later this year. 

Sheppard reveals to Star Observer that his fourth book is a sequel to Invisible Boys — and it’s already completed. He remains tight-lipped about the details, but confirms it revisits the boys “sometime in the future.”

“I’m really proud of it. My husband said, ‘This is the best thing you’ve ever written – it’s better than Invisible Boys.’”

Whether in print or on screen, Invisible Boys is a story that refuses to be ignored. Its unflinching honesty, grit, and celebration of queer identity and the search for personal freedom is set to captivate audiences around the world.

Holden will be appearing in Sydney for book signings and an in conversation event with the Bookshop Darlinghurst on February 20, tickets are still available online.

Invisible Boys screens on Stan Australia from February 13.