During a panel event for Class in east London ahead of the premiere of the first episode, BuzzFeed News asked Ness why he wrote the characters in this way. He responded:

"When I was a kid I never saw myself in books, I never saw myself on the screen, I never dreamed that the lead of the show would be somebody like me. The lack of that is harmful.

"I never saw it. It harms people, when you don't see yourself on-screen. You are harmed, you are implicitly disinvited from the party, and when I started writing books, I thought, This is never going to happen again on my watch.

"One of my fundamental beliefs is that one of the ways to change the world is act as if the world has actually changed."