The world is on lockdown. It’s 2020. Hand sanitizer and blue face masks occupy every spare drawer in your house. You spend your days toggling between worry and watching television. ‘Normal’ feels like a fever dream. You yearn for it like you would a lover.

In the midst of all that anxiety and confusion, imagine yourself as a 16-year-old boy not yet out of secondary school. You open your phone one morning and two million strangers are following you on Instagram. People you’ve never met are viewing your story, curious to see what you’ve had for breakfast, maybe, or hoping to catch a glimpse of your bedroom. One of the oddest moments in recent history made odder by the fact that you are suddenly famous. Everyone is socially distant and fearful for their lives, but this doesn’t stop them from yelling your name across the street.

Louis Partridge doesn’t have to imagine any such circumstance. 

Enola Holmes (Netflix’s saccharine reimagining of the Sherlock Holmes story, told from the perspective of the famous detective’s adolescent sister) dropped at the height of the pandemic, introducing teenage girls across the world to a new ‘heartthrob’ to parasocially lose their minds over.

“It was just a perfect storm,” the actor shares. “It was lockdown so people were really watching stuff because they had no other choice. It was huge for me. Absolutely seismic. I was still in school, getting all this attention suddenly.”

Partridge, now 21, is somewhere in North England, busy filming another Netflix project, this time a show titled House of Guinness from renowned Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. He tells me it’s “the middle of nowhere.” I imagine greenery and fields coated in gloomy fog. Seeing as the location he’s shooting on is meant to be a stand in for rural Ireland, I wager that I’m not far off.

We’re sat over Zoom, and in typical British form, we start with the weather. (I admit I’m sat outside in the rain because the connection inside the café I’m working from is horrible; his immediate response is “Please don’t catch a cold.”) He’s earnest and charming; polite, engaged. In many ways, the perfect conversation partner for an afternoon like this one.

This year alone has seen Partridge achieve the thing most actors his age can only dream of—landing a role in a new Alfonso Cuarón limited series Disclaimer, where he plays Jonathan, the deceased son of Kevin Kline’s Stephen Brigstocke. The Apple TV+ series follows Cate Blanchett as Catherine Ravenscroft, who is forced to confront a grueling secret she’s kept hidden for 20 years. The show was treated to a splashy Venice Film Festival rollout, Partridge in tow to make his debut on the carpet.

He speaks about the Venice debut sheepishly. “I don’t think I’m a perfectionist...but it was just so painful. I had Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, sitting in the row behind me and the uh...the nudity of it all was a little overwhelming to say the least.”

I can’t see Louis’ face, but I can practically hear him blush. I almost feel bad laughing at his forlorn tone. “That, coupled with my own insecurity, made it a day to remember,” he laughs.

He continues, “I really don’t enjoy watching my performances back, especially around other people. You spend so much of it too fixated on your own failings. They shine so much brighter to you than any of your successful moments... Alfonso said that he’s the same way.”

Though he speaks of Cuarón with awe in his voice, he doesn’t deify him the way you’d expect; in fact, before his audition for Disclaimer, he admits that he only vaguely knew of the director’s work (though it should be noted that he watched Cuarón’s Oscars acceptance speech the night before his audition, a decision he wisely calls “a horrible, horrible idea.”)

“I did this one scene for him, got the nervous take out of the way and he came over and just told me about the character. This is where he came from, this is where he’s going. You could tell he was so invested in this world he was creating. It helped calm me so much because instead of overthinking every choice, I just felt connected to the story.”

Partridge isn’t exactly shy—he’s too engaged for that—but he does seem sweetly introverted at points. He admits to some anxiousness willingly, especially when he’s working. Having to overcome some form of trepidation seems to be a common theme throughout his creative work. “I came across a quote,” he says. “I say that like it was some philosopher I was reading [but] it was actually Paul Mescal talking about how Ridley Scott told him on the first day of shooting Gladiator II that [Mescal’s] nerves mean nothing to him. And it’s so true. I’ve been thinking so much about that because I struggle with that. As an audience member, you don’t want to watch someone who is nervous, someone who is struggling with themselves.”

The conversation turns to craft and process. Some actors talk about their work with a religiosity you’d expect from a priest or surgeon. Partridge’s view is, however, delightfully more grounded. “Ultimately you are playing. Actors used to be called players. You have to throw it all out and have fun with it. You should do your homework, but don’t take yourself too seriously. It shouldn’t feel serious; there’s fun to be had.”

My curiosity gets the better of me; he’s sat in the freezing cold in rural England after shooting for months on end, away from loved ones: Where is the cynicism? The grousing we’ve come to expect (rightly I’d argue) about work conditions and long days? Does this not feel like a job? “You do six day weeks and the days are long and it’s cold, and you’ve got back to back to back scenes and you’ve got to learn all this dialogue which happens a lot when you are shooting TV—so yeah, it does feel a little bit like a job sometimes,” he admits.

If “look on the bright side” were a person, it’d be Louis Partridge; every comment that might be construed as a polite complaint is followed automatically by a statement that counters it: “I’d be kidding if I said that acting is anything like a real ‘job’ though. It’s a brilliant career to have. You get treated so warmly, you work for months, yes, but you also get months off. And when the cameras roll, it’s brilliant. Being able to do something creative as your job—when it feels truly creative—is such a blessing. To express yourself in this pure way...I bet you understand as a writer how special that feeling is.”

I do. It’s why I want to know if there are any specific moments on set where he’s felt like it all made sense to him, and coincidentally there is. At 17, a year on from playing the perfectly adorable Tewkesbury in Enola Holmes, he played Sid Vicious in FX show Pistol, trying to bring to life a man who could not be more different in spirit or sensibility to both the viscount and himself. He excels in that show, his performance audacious and endlessly watchable.

“There was a moment on that set where I did something I’m now realizing I’ve inadvertently been chasing this whole time,” he recalls. “It was sort of this structured improvisation. It’s not even my favorite scene, but the way it felt shooting—it was magical. I think it’s in episode six of the show where he’s recording with Nancy and he’s in the studio trying to figure out which song is going to be his solo. I’ve never felt so connected to the words. It was really weird; I’d barely learned the lines that day. I did this thing where I read over everything a few times, and if I’m honest, I hadn’t really thought about that moment much. I didn’t have a plan. I think I did ten takes and everything felt different every time and everything made sense every time. I don’t know what it was but that whole day felt really moving to me.”

He clears his throat, and because he can’t let himself sit in that self-seriousness too long, he cracks a joke. “Naturally, I came back the next day and did a bunch of really shit work.” 

That refusal to sentimentalize his acting means that his view on saying goodbye to projects could be described as healthy. “I find it almost too easy to leave projects behind. I love saying goodbye to them. Having this person preoccupy your life for months on end and then getting to leave them behind is actually a real joy for me. I love newness.”

Partridge is very much a listless spirit, drawn to change and creative challenge; it is entirely unsurprising then that it is music—specifically jazz and the blues—that brings him solace and inspiration when he is not working. “I’m a bit obsessed with [jazz and blues] music at the minute. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can, starting all the way from the 1900s to the present day. I’ve been reading about the transition from classical music to ragtime to jazz, and all these wonderful, colorful figures who had rough and ready lives. Learning about all those figures that were lost to time and all those songs that weren’t meant to survive. Despite all the violence they had to endure and all the oppression they were facing, they created something beautiful for themselves. They were real artists.”

Like those jazz musicians he so deeply admires, you never really know what note Partridge is going to play next. He might be young, but the diversity apparent in his filmography is refreshing and ever surprising. It feels like rebellion on his part: if you think you know who he is because you follow him on Instagram, think again. Watch him make this left turn when you expect him to go right.

If the consequence of that rebellion is getting projects like Disclaimer, then long may Louis Patridge rebel. 

Photographed by Damian Foxe

Styled by Elad Bitton

Written by Ayan Artan

Hair: Mark Francome Painter

Grooming: Liz Daxauer at Caren using Hello Sunday

Flaunt Film: Rodney Rico

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