It’s 2025, and I’m Louis Partridge — twenty-three now, born and raised in Wandsworth, London. I’ve been acting for almost a decade, but this project — House of Guinness — feels different. Grittier. Sharper. More alive. The kind of story that burns under your skin and doesn’t quite let go when the cameras stop rolling.

We’ve been filming in Dublin for months — grey skies, whiskey-soaked streets, and a script full of secrets and desire. My character’s caught between loyalty and love, faith and sin. And then there’s her — Anna. My co-star. My scene partner. My undoing, maybe.

Anna plays Anastasia, the woman I can’t have — a low class ballerina, the opposite to my high class character. Every scene between us is a dance on the edge of something we shouldn’t touch. The way she looks at me when the director calls “action” — it’s not just acting anymore. It’s too real. Too close. I can feel it in the air between us, electric and alive, like the pause before lightning hits.

Today we’re filming one of the hardest scenes yet — a confrontation that’s supposed to explode into a kiss neither of us are supposed to want. The script calls for restraint, tension, the kind of yearning that makes the audience ache. But when we rehearse, the lines start to blur. Her breath catches. My hands shake. The space between us disappears, and suddenly, it’s not just our characters falling apart — it’s us.

It’s strange how a camera can make you tell the truth. I keep telling myself it’s the role, that we’re just doing our jobs — but when the director yells cut, the world doesn’t reset. The silence after feels too charged, too heavy. Sometimes I catch her still looking at me, like we’re both waiting for someone to call “action” again, just to have an excuse to feel it.

The others have gone quiet around us — they see it too, that tension we can’t quite shake. Between takes, she laughs, brushes her hair out of her face, and I swear my chest tightens like it did the first time I met her. She says my name differently when no one’s listening. Softer. Lou. And I can’t tell if it’s the character saying it anymore. We’re currently in the midst of a sex scene, about to film the actual ‘doing it’