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“Excuse the bed,” says Louis Partridge, joining our Zoom from his childhood bedroom in London—the one he still lives in, despite the massive celebrity, the pop-superstar girlfriend, the Prada ads, the recent 21st birthday, and the erotically charged, frequently disrobed role in this month’s seven-episode Apple TV+ series Disclaimer, starring Cate Blanchett as a journalist with long-buried secrets and Leila George as her younger self.
The bed behind Partridge is a mess. As is the rest of the room. “I’m heading off to work soon, so I’m in a packing stage,” he explains. The actor came of age as Enola Holmes’s love interest in the Netflix young-detective films, but warning: Disclaimer, the latest from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, is very much adults-only. Below, our latest ELLE Man discusses all of the above and the women in his life who have inspired him.
Disclaimer opens with a sex scene between you and your girlfriend in which you quite amusingly underperform, and I wonder what you think Cuarón is getting at by starting the whole series that way?
Alfonso has many schemes and harebrained ideas, and often it takes me a while to understand them and then I think, Ohhhh. I think the sex aspect is quite typical of Alfonso—Y Tu Mamá También is one of my favorite films. All the emotions tied up in sex, be it passion, lust, violence—they’re all themes that show themselves throughout the series.
It struck me that the first scene is about youth and innocence—sexual innocence in particular.
Alfonso was definitely pushing me toward innocence before anything else. He was urging me to go younger—essentially, unshackle all of this confidence you’ve picked up and take yourself back to the first time. So it was a lot of stuttering. Which was fun to play.
The younger version of Cate Blanchett’s character is quite calculating and seductive. Can you relate to that feeling of manipulation?
No, I’ve been lucky. I’ve had solid relationships in that sense. I haven’t suffered from manipulation, but I imagine it’s easier than you imagine it is, and however immune you feel to it, certain people you meet might be able to wield some kind of power over you. But I definitely feel an innocence in me, for sure. I think everybody does. It gets painted over with various colors, but it’s important to hold onto.
Name a woman—outside of your family—whom you admired growing up.
I remember in school reading The Age of Innocence—Edith Wharton. I just thought she was so funny writing about a world that seems so stuffy and contained. I read a bit of Joan Didion recently, courtesy of my girlfriend recommending her—Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which really made me want to go to LA.
I swear I’m not just being cheeky: Name a female singer whose music makes you sing along.
Hahaha! My girlfriend has been trying to get me into more pop recently—Chappell Roan has been on repeat. Other than that, it would have to be Nina Simone. I think the first song of hers I properly heard—I must have been drunk in an Uber on the way home from a night out, and I had my good headphones on and was listening to “Mr. Bojangles.” There was so much life in her voice and richness and clearly some scars. And I just thought, “Wow, so, so romantic.”
Since we’re talking about music and you alluded to Olivia Rodrigo’s influence: Is “So American” about you?
[Laughs] Not my song, not my place. So I wouldn’t know.
What’s something about women that you envy?
In general, they treat themselves well. They’ve got self-care down. And I think guys are slowly starting to catch up, but they’re struggling a little bit.
And what baffles you about women?
I think in past relationships my mind worked at a different speed to the women I’ve known. A bit slower. The way I would characterize it is like a Golden Retriever and a black cat. I can imagine being happy sitting and catching a Frisbee.
You’ve got two sisters—one younger, one older. What have you learned about women from them?
Oh, a lot. I was never intimidated by speaking to women because of it. I don’t have any weird memories of being turned away in the school playground because I didn’t quite know how to speak to women. And I probably learned to give them their own space. I used to really tease my older sister. When I was bored, that would be my activity of choice. And then she’d flip and just get a look in her eye, and I’d know that you don’t fuck with her.
Finish this sentence: No woman should ever have to [blank].
Wait in line for a toilet—that I feel bad about. I’m always tempted to say, “Just come on over here.”
Last question: You have a long car trip to take. Out of all your female co-stars, who are you bringing along for company?
It would have to be someone with good taste in music. And as much as I love Millie [Bobby Brown], I don’t know if we see eye to eye on the music front. Leila was very cool and had fantastic stories, and she showed me some good tunes. We bonded over Van Morrison and The Band. So I might choose her.
A version of this story appears in the October 2024 issue of ELLE.
Devin Gordon is a writer based in Brookline, Massachusetts, and the author of So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets—the Best Worst Team in Sports.