“Anyone Who Knows Me Or Knew Me When I Was Younger Would Be Laughing At The Idea [Of Me Being A Fashion Campaign Face]”: Corey Mylchreest On Becoming A Fully-Fledged Leading Man

He is destined to be the next go-to star of the silver screen, a longstanding fashion week mainstay, and as he outlines below – if yet more of his ambitions materialise – the next Italian-speaking Brit. The Bridgerton graduate and Netflix darling finds a few minutes between an ever-stacked schedule to discuss flitting between roles, learning new languages and his newfound BOSS-boy status.

When I meet Corey Mylchreest, he’s sitting in a barstool grooming chair in a photography studio in Stoke Newington. His hair is in crocodile clips, his stubble freshly shaved and under eye masks laid as he goes through glam before his cover shoot. Is this anything like his normal morning routine? “What do you think? No, not at all,” he responds with a heavy dose of British mordant charm. For those interested in what the actor’s skincare routine does look like, he “sometimes moisturises, that’s about it. Yeah, I really need to get myself sorted on that.” 

Despite his natural youth and unassuming heartthrob status – won chiefly via his lead turn as a misunderstood King George III in 2023’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story – you can understand why the 27-year-old is thinking about upping the skincare. His face is increasingly everywhere. He’s become a Netflix darling, fronting projects such as 2025’s soul-stirring rom-com My Oxford Year, political thriller show Hostage and January’s star-studded miniseries Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials. TikToks of him sat on the front row at Milan and Paris fashion week alongside the likes of David Beckham and Kit Connor have probably crossed your For You Page. He’s also officially become a BOSS boy – a brand ambassador for the storied German house and star of their ‘Be The Next’ campaign for 2026. Fittingly, around him as we talk is a whole wardrobe of BOSS: sepia-hued knitwear and tailoring to be layered, dapper shoes, suave shades and boxes of crisp white briefs. 

Life isn’t quite what it used to be for the star since his last conversation with Man About Town three years ago, just before he was plucked from obscurity for the Bridgerton spin-off, that made period drama lovers swoon the world over. “I don’t live with my mum anymore. That’s the privilege of working with Netflix,” he laughs. Born in Walthamstow before growing up in Leytonstone, his new address remains in East London, meaning he still gets to see her and his home friends regularly between jobs. “I’m incredibly lucky. I get more work, and I’m eternally grateful for that. I also get noticed, which I feel incredibly ridiculous about, but I’m getting better at dealing with that.”

He’s noticing the lack of privacy a lot more, especially when navigating parts of his hometown he once could express freely within. “It’s something I think I will be getting used to for the rest of my life. It’s not a natural state of being, and it’s definitely not something that I prepared for in any way.” That’s not to say he’s complaining. “I also recognise that there are a lot of people who would trade anonymity in a heartbeat for work and doing the thing that you love. All things considered, I’m very lucky.”  

Having said that, he hasn’t been able to spend much time at home lately. The week prior to us meeting, he wrapped production in Malta on The Travel Writer – an indie mystery drama from Oscar nominee Heidi Ewing about a journalist in the mid-80s who retires to Sicily and finds himself embroiled in a powerful and lustful conspiracy. For the role, he had to grow out his hair and grow scruff to play the character who has “let himself go a bit”, something which, as soon as he’s sat in the grooming chair, he’s happy to be rid of. It’s nothing like the beard he had to wear for the production before, though: a live-action feature film adaptation of the ’60s Tintin comic book Blake and Mortimer: The Yellow “M”, where Mylchreest plays Welsh captain Francis Blake, fit with seafaring facial hair. “They got loads of grass fibres from model villages and painted them black and some grey and auburn, and then they had a static machine and would charge it with an electric current while I held the end of a wire,” Mylchreest explains. “Then they would put glue on the patches of my beard that weren’t filled and just shake the fibres on. It felt so strange, all you could feel was the glue like you had tape over your face.”

After the shoot, he’s flying to Porto via Madrid in preparation for a movie that will start production the following week. Before filming commences, however, he has to fly back on himself to lend his timbre to an as-yet unrevealed project with Audible. “It’s absolutely not usually like this, just to clarify. Life’s just a bit mental at the moment.” He’s hoping to be able to spend the summer in London, though, seeing mates in his old hangouts like Clissold Park. “A few of my mates growing up lived about 15 to 20 minutes away, and the park would shut at something like 8 pm, so we’d climb over the gate and get drunk. Before that, we’d play football there all the time.”

Those same mates, he argues, would not believe he’s the face of BOSS now and attending fashion shows. “Anyone who knows me or knew me when I was younger would be laughing at the idea. It’s very surreal.” He speaks about his new reality of watching runway shows with wide-eyed enthusiasm, like a kid who has just discovered Thorpe Park. “The landscape and the music at the shows are like something out of a Denis Villeneuve film. And then there are these models that are so perfect that you’re like, ‘Are you human?’ And the clothes are very expressive and experimental. It’s always a wonder to gaze at.”

However, Mylchreest can be prone to insecurity amidst the theatrics of the fashion world. “It feels so alien to me. I don’t speak the language of [it]. I don’t feel like a native in that industry. It’s such an ecosystem, and it informs everything. I have such a reverence for it. I remember thinking, ‘Okay, you can talk about silhouette. That’s a nice word for you to use. Talk about the silhouette or the textures.’” Fashion can famously be elitist and unforthcoming towards those not in the know. That’s part of the reason he agreed to be an ambassador for BOSS – the brand’s world doesn’t feel too remote from him. “They’re really grounded and feel closer to my personal style,” he explains.

How would he describe his personal style? “Simple and versatile.” He says that none of his acting roles have particularly influenced his fashion sense long-term – not the regency gear of King George, the preppy academic uniform of My Oxford Year’s Jamie Davenport, and certainly not the top hat he donned in The Sandman. Rather, they’ve shown him how he doesn’t want to dress in his downtime. He has kept a few jeans and shoes from projects, though. “I don’t like having loads of different stuff to wear. I like things I can dress up or down. Classics. Mostly jeans and a shirt or a vest.” Very East London; also very BOSS. “If there was a Venn diagram of the fashion industry on one side and the clothes that I wear on the other, BOSS is probably the brand that’s most in the centre.” 

Most teenage boys’ entry point to the brand came either via the fragrance or the underwear. Mylchreest’s bucked the trend, however. Growing up, his mum’s partner was obsessed with BOSS. “I mean, he had BOSS shoes, jeans, t-shirts, and jackets. He had the aftershave. I still remember the smell of it from almost 20 years ago.” For Mylchreest’s 18th birthday, his dad then bought him the BOSS Bottled fragrance. “I remember it had Chris Hemsworth in the adverts and thinking it was all so cool.” 

In said commercials, the elder Hemsworth brother, ascending into peak dreamboat status, is layered in minimalist staples and sleek tailoring, a similar approach to the looks put together for Mylchreest by Holly White, a stylist who dresses many of Britain’s nascent crop of screen stars, also including Heartstopper’s Joe Locke and fellow Bridgerton leading man Luke Newton. “When I was doing the press tour for Bridgerton, and I first met Holly, she asked me to send over some pictures of looks from anyone or anytime that I liked. I just sent her loads of pictures of Brad Pitt in the ’90s in these loose yet classic suits, looking like a very cool dude.” Pitt, as an actor, a fashion muse and a personality, has been a defining influence on Mylchreest, not least his work in Ocean’s Eleven. However, Mylchreest, self-depricatingly, doesn’t think he could replicate that embodiment of cool, despite the fancams of him being charming at public events that would suggest otherwise. “I really respect Brad’s work. It’s really difficult to be that cool. It’s a real skill, and it’s all done so subtly.” For a BOSS show last year, Mylchreest was given a very Brad-coded suit to wear, and he pleaded with the team to let him keep it. “It’s now a prized possession,” he says with a smile.   

BOSS’s latest campaign, entitled “Be The Next”, stars Mylchreest alongside Meghann Fahy, famed for The White Lotus Season 2. The two will also appear together in the upcoming big-screen supernatural thriller Banquet. An evolution of the brand’s famed “Be Your Own Boss” mantra, “Be The Next” showcases cultural trailblazers as they direct their journey and command their destination. Since Bridgerton, critics and fans alike have labelled Mylchreest in interviews and casual chatter as “the next…” Hugh Grant, Theo James, even James Bond. You can see where those parallels stem from; however, for Mylchreest, the drawing of resemblance can feel complicated. “It’s swings and roundabouts, really. On the one hand, Hugh Grant and Jonathan Bailey are phenomenal actors. Jonathan is such a moving performer, and Hugh, especially right now, is stepping into this new space while still being hilarious and charming. So I’m like, ‘Thank you for comparing me to these people I respect.’ On the other hand, I’m trying to do my own thing. I’m never thinking, ‘Let’s try and be like this person.’ Alternatively, he’s also not overthinking the roles he does in case they elicit comparisons. “It’s more a thought process of, ‘Is this different for me? Does this scare me? Does it excite me?’ Comparison is the thief of joy, but it will always exist. It’s an industry where you’re scrutinised, and compared all the time, so it’s something you have to get used to, I guess.”  

Who does Mylchreest see himself as next? “I’ve been thinking about the Prisoner of Azkaban a lot,” Mylchreest responds surprisingly. No, he’s not becoming a wizard or hinting at being cast in the controversial HBO remake of the literary and cinematic blockbuster, although fans of his will already know he’s a massive Potter-head. He sweetly asks if I’ve watched the 22-year-old third instalment of the era-defining series because he doesn’t want to spoil it for me, before giving an animated explanation of the final scenes, in which Harry mistakes a figure he saw previously in the distance as his dad, returning to protect him from the Dementors, before realising it was actually a future version of himself who is able to do magic his younger counterpart isn’t strong enough to master. “It’s being the next you before you even believe you can do it,” Mylchreest ponders. “Diving off the deep end, taking that leap of faith and proving to yourself you can do it. I’m very busy with work at the moment, and a lot of the things I’m having to do terrify me, but I think that’s healthy. I think, ‘I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to do this,’ but then you grow and learn. I’m trying to figure out how to summarise that in a sentence, though.” 

He may struggle to summarise his ambitions in a succinct, catchy, billboard-ready phrase, but what Mylchreest describes is evident in the way he moves through his career. He’s willing to put himself in unexpected situations and seeks the thrill of jumping into deep, unknown waters when the moment calls. When I ask him whether there are things he would still like to achieve, it’s clear he’s not one for self-limitations. “There are so many directors I want to work with. People thatI’ve respected for absolute yonks, but also new directors. I think I want to look at the people I work with rather than specific characters or anything.” Although the actor is full of surprises, his main goal right now is one even his most ardent fans might have struggled to anticipate. While working on The Travel Writer, the Italian actors on set were teaching him Italian while he taught them English colloquialisms in exchange. “One for the road” and “I owe you one” apparently featured on his syllabus.  “I really want to learn Italian,” he tells me. “I’ve got the bug now.” It will definitely help him with the fashion crowd in Milan next season. 

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is available to watch on Netflix now