Deploy contract to local hardhat node with forked Kovan chain - ethereum

Question

I am trying to write tests for my contract on Kovan network. In order to do so I am using the fork feature of hardhat and added the following to the hardhat.config.js file:
module.exports = {
solidity: "0.8.0",
defaultNetwork: "hardhat",
networks: {
hardhat: {
forking: {
url: INFURA_URL,
accounts: [`0x${PRIVATE_KEY}`]
}
}
}
};
INFURA_URL points to node on Kovan. PRIVATE_KEY is the key of an account on Kovan I would like to deploy with. This variables work well when I deploy to Kovan directly but not to forked node.
In my deployment script I do the following:
const [deployer] = await ethers.getSigners();
But my deployer is not the account that corresponds to the private key from config. It is a correct account when I deploy directly to Kovan.
Not sure why does this happen are forks of Kovan not supported on hardhat?

Answer 1

The way it worked for me was to forget Hardhat and rely entirely on ethers, for that I created a Signer specifying a private key and a provider like:
import { providers, Wallet } from 'ethers';
require('dotenv').config();
const main = async() => {
const providerLocal = new
providers.JsonRpcProvider("http://127.0.0.1:8545");
const owner = new Wallet(process.env.DEPLOYER_PRIVATE_KEY as string, providerLocal);
console.log(`The wallet ${owner.address} will deploy this contract`)
const MyContract = await ethers.getContractFactory('MyContract');
const mycontract = await MayContract.connect(owner).deploy();
}
main();