If you’re young and famous and beautiful, like Louis Partridge , social media can be a strange place. On the 21-year-old actor’s Instagram, admiring followers – nine million of them – convene daily across geographical space and time, finding community in throwing around declarations of love like flowers at his feet. Venture into the comments section and you’ll find an emoji-ridden stream of “louis i am in love with you”, “my husband”, “so pretty!” and countless references to “so american”, the giddy love song that Olivia Rodrigo’s fans are convinced she wrote about him.
The young couple aren’t secretive about their relationship, but in the era of the soft launch and the hard launch and incredibly observant fans, they can play it a little cool: it’s enough for people to hear Partridge laughing off-camera in a video of Rodrigo getting accosted by British weather on an open-topped double-decker bus, or to piece things together from their photos from Lisbon or Madrid on the European leg of the Guts tour . “I’m lucky that the majority of things I see on my social media are nice,” Partridge says, a little shyly. The problem tends to be that things veer a little too nice: “A little bit manic.
” Partridge has had a great summer. A “hot girl summer”, even, he says. He wrapped a film in Tuscany (“It might just be my favourite place in the world”); turned the golden age of 21; and discovered the pleasures of Frisbee.
In fact, if anything .