Some people are noisy. We all know one, or a few. Inane babblers, frequent moaners, heavy stompers, constant ramblers, messy slurpers. But when actor Connor Swindells walks into an east London studio for our shoot, it’s taken a few minutes for the room to clock the fact our 23-year-old star is here. Light on his toes despite the 6 foot (albeit wiry) frame – a remnant from his former life as a boxer – and with a reserved, clear and impressively precise way of speaking, he’s the sort of rising star who prefers to let the work do the talking.

Look back at Swindells’ relatively short acting journey to date and there’s plenty for him to shout about though. Raised in a Sussex village, Swindells didn’t even study drama at secondary school. His first foray came at 19 when he bagged the lead role in a local am-dram play after making a bet with a friend. Two years later, he was cast as one of the film’s leads in The Vanishing alongside Hollywood A-lister Gerard Butler.

The big break came in January of last year. To the naysayers, Sex Education was meant to be just another teen-bait Netflix series to soon fade into obscurity alongside its largely unknown cast.

OUTFIT CREDITS | Denim shirt: Acne, Rollneck: Reiss

40 million subscribers watched it in the first month, putting it in the top ten most-watched Netflix shows in the UK in 2019. With those figures, Netflix was never going to let the series get away from them. And so exactly a year later, Swindells, one of the leads from the first season, is promoting the second with us.

Sex Education’s irreverent, nostalgia-inducing take on teenagers coming to terms with their sexuality became a hit with the critics. Social media took the show to its heart, especially the young, relatable cast. The Instagram follower counts exploded. Swindells has half a million. Random people started coming up to him within the first week.