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Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the BL drama Ticket to Heaven, now streaming on GagaOOLala.
Have you ever felt your heart soar watching A Tale of Thousand Stars? Or maybe, you’ve been left screaming, crying, throwing up after binging Last Twilight? Does the rooftop kiss in episode 5 of Bad Buddy still live rent-free in your mind?
If your answer to any of those three questions is a yes, the name P’Aof might ring a bell. With a name revered in the realm of BL dramas from Thailand, Aof Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon (known as P’Aof with honorifics) is a writer and director who serves as GMMTV’s senior producer. His latest series, Ticket to Heaven, premiered its sixth and final episode on July 4, 2026, and continues his legacy of potent, emotionally provocative stories.
Ticket to Heaven stars Gemini as rebellious scholarship student Barth, alongside Teen Vogue’s New Hollywood Class of 2025 alum Fourth, who stars as devout believer Tanrak. It’s 1996 and the students of St. Magdalene College live under strict rules. Tanrak stays the course, walking a faithful path believing he will one day reach heaven and reunite with his late parents. That’s until Barth arrives, carrying his own trauma and guilt. Together, they forge a bond that grows from friendship into something more; passionate and exhilarating yet forbidden.
“We helped inject the attitude that we believe in—that being LGBT isn’t wrong,” P’Aof tells Teen Vogue. “That’s all, just short and simple. It’s not wrong, it’s really not wrong. We just have to love ourselves enough, and God will love you just the way you are.”
Teen Vogue caught up over a video call with P’Aof (via interpreter) to unpack all things Ticket to Heaven.
P’Aof: For us, there were two main reasons for our choice to base it in 1996. Firstly, we used real experience as inspiration to write this story, which is why I chose 1996 as the time that matches my own timeline. The second reason is that when we are questioning gender identity, if we were to base this story in the present time, the message and the pressure would not be the same as the past. The most important part of that is that [LGBTQ+ people] weren’t accepted by society and no one would talk about it publicly. Those are the two big reasons why we chose to base it in that year.
I want to say that this isn’t really based on a true story, because so many people have misunderstood that this story is actually what happened to me, but it's actually only based on personal experience and some memories that I have.
P’Aof: Really, there are two main things that I included, which are the mindset and how the character questions things in this series. I feel like I question things in the same way the character questions things, which is whether it is possible for love and faith to live side by side, or is it wrong to think that? This was the key point for me, and it defines me. The second thing is how romantic this series is; that definitely defines me in this series.
P’Aof: Well, I use it while working with the actors. Both of the actors are boys, so that's where I needed to bring in my input as a gay man or a member of the LGBTQ+ community to help explain the way of thinking for their characters, and also a more complex understanding of what the characters would have experienced or felt at that time.
P’Aof: There are a lot of scenes, but I will choose the one that pops up first in my head after hearing this question. The scene in episode three, which is when Barth comes and asks Tanrak if he can do the Christmas play with Cherry, when he sneakily comes to talk to him at Tanrak's bed. I had a similar experience to that scene.
Well, don’t ask a follow-up question about who I was in that scene, [Laughs] because in some scenes, in some way, I identify as both characters, Barth and Tanrak, so I can’t really tell you who I was in that scene.
P’Aof: [Laughs, thinks about it] Uh, I’m Barth in the scene.
P’Aof: The main goal for us was that you don’t need to choose between faith in God and your life, but we’re putting the big question out there of how to live with both of these in our lives, which is the key message to our story. You might have seen at the end of the final episode the character Na Lek, who is an LGBTQ+ character, who says that we can love God and love ourselves at the same time. We thought that was the most important factor and proof of this show.
P’Aof: This is a character who has had a very special place in the series since the beginning, when we started to write our script for the series. We wanted this character to represent that you could still have faith, no matter how you gender-identify yourself. Our first goal was to find someone who was either gay or transgender to represent this character, and upon our research, we found so many individuals who still have faith in God and are true to themselves. I feel like that was one of our best choices to include this character in the show.
A fun fact is that this character, Na Lek, was one of the most recast characters in the show—I think around six times. So you can see that’s why this character was so special and we took time deciding on who would play it. We [had originally] cast famous people in the community or even newbies in the entertainment industry, but we ended up casting who you see as Na Lek today.
P’Aof: To be honest, we wanted a character who represents someone who believes wholeheartedly that God exists. So we wanted this character to grow up living in God and be filled with the faith he believes in. Then, we let this character lose both his parents to allow him to step into a scholarship at a church school. This has shaped the character and prepared him to believe and have faith in God since childhood, and after losing his parents, he still has the mindset that if he believes in God, he could meet them again.
P’Aof: We didn't want anyone to be a villain in this series; we didn't want religion to be at fault or for anyone to be at fault. But if you look at the Bible, the message we highlighted was that love is the most important. We feel that this key message is what God is trying to tell us, and that is what God is trying to tell every human: that if there isn’t love, there can’t be anything else. You don’t have to choose between your love for God and love for someone, but you can see that love finds a place in both these scenarios, so that’s why love is a key message to this series.
P’Aof: They grew up quite a lot in terms of their talents. We can maybe see in the series where both of them could express both characters really well. The other thing that we could sense is that they grew up in a very responsible way as actors. They are responsible for the duties that are granted to them while walking the path of becoming an actor, and the responsibility of growing up and accepting these roles that are coming into their lives, both physically and emotionally. That is what I have seen of them, and I saw them grow more responsibly.
P’Aof: What I wanted to mention is in episode five, where both of the characters have reached their breaking point and fought in front of the “Ticket to Heaven” painting, which is the scene where Barth yells at Tanrak about his prayers. The sequence where Barth apologizes was never in the script, and it felt very well suited to the storyline; it’s like a magic moment.
P’Aof: When the characters were secretly meeting in the storage closet. In the script, we knew that the characters weren’t going to do anything just yet, but they would have to almost cross that line. They start to get intimate, like kissing or being close to each other, to make the emotions go through the roof. We knew that this scene would feel more exposed than the love scene.
In a love scene, it will start off with kissing, but this scene was more than that, so there were a lot of conversations with the actors: What was our vision for the scene? And where did they put their boundaries, such as any place you don’t want the other to touch or anything you don’t want to do in this intimate scene that could cause any discomfort? So there was a lot of talking before the filming of the scene, but when we filmed it, we let it go with the flow and asked the actors to play it out, and the result came out to be a very intimate scene, and we are happy to see that.
We spent more time talking about that scene than we were filming that scene, because we wanted to make sure that both of them were comfortable enough and felt safe enough to film that scene, and that scene was [literally] very hot to film. If you notice in the scene, we can see that Barth is always sweating. That was real sweat, and we thought that seeing that in this scenario added to the intimate scene.
P’Aof: This is a really important scene in this show. I feel like this scene was meant to pressure Tanrak. Let’s picture this: someone with whom we feel a connection is standing next to us naked; the character would have to control his emotions. If we were to dig deeper, imagine a kid who just went through puberty and whose hormones are just through the roof seeing a guy friend who’s standing next to them naked. It was a test for Tanrak on how he would control his emotions.
P’Aof: I’m saying this on the day that the series has ended already: I want to thank them for portraying a glimpse of time in my life that I might’ve forgotten. Both of the characters were there to unlock what has been on my mind, and they have answered questions I’ve had from back in the day, perfectly.
But if we were to talk about that day, we cried in front of the monitor because I felt bad for what the characters had to go through. As a director, I needed to know the in-depth emotions at the same level as what the actors feel, so we could know how they would express it on screen. That’s why you might have seen me crying in front of the monitor quite often, because I was feeling what the characters were feeling as well.
P’Aof: This series was made not to question if religion is wrong or love is right, so the person who would be able to talk about this is the Father, because the message from Jesus would have to come through them. So I felt like it wouldn’t be anything wrong if the Father was the one who said it, because I wholeheartedly feel that God loves everyone no matter who you are, no matter what gender you are. So that’s why the Father was a representative of Jesus to send out these messages.
P’Aof: We receive this kind of question quite a lot as well in the BL industry. I realized that I’m also someone who is in this community and has a happy life and a happy ending to my own story so I felt like this was a good attitude to have when filming the series. We want to tell the audience that being an LGBTQ+ member doesn’t have to end as a tragedy. If you have faith in love—of course it’s not going to be like the fairytales you read—but if you started off with faith that you will have a good love life, you will achieve it. Personally, it’s also because I do have a good love life, and it started off by me believing that I would have it, so it’s about looking at it with a good attitude.
P’Aof: Of course, we are doing a story that deals with an issue that relates to people all over the world, and it is a matter of faith for the majority of people. Therefore, we have to place even greater importance on how we can tell this story correctly while still maintaining respect for every single belief. Because of this, consulting with the relevant organizations was necessary.
We went to consult with the Father [priest] many, many times. Even when it came to the final script of each week, we would still keep sending it to constantly update. Even down to the verses in the Bible, like which era of the Bible this is from, which version of the Bible must be used for interpretation. We consulted the Father on whether there were prayers like this in the year 1996, and whether these prayers are still currently in use. The Father was the one who helped refine [the script] and gave us the correct information. The Father himself was very kind and gave very detailed advice. We were given the opportunity to present this story freely, but still based on correctness and without any judgment.
P’Aof: It's something that I’ve only recently felt, that people have always been afraid to talk about religion and things like that. But as of today, personally, I feel that the more we talk about it, the more it makes me feel like it's no longer a distant matter. It should be something that we can bring up to discuss with respect and without judgment. So, I would probably just say that religion is something that can be discussed; it’s not something that needs to be hidden, or something that is forbidden to be spoken about or questioned. But first, it has to be based on an attitude where we are ready to adjust, tune in, and understand those differences. I'm glad to feel that we got to express our love for God in our own way through the series, and that those messages reached the audience watching this story all over the world.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Translation provided by Ratvara Sethavaravichit.
