House of Guinness Cast: Full List of Actors & Characters 2025

Netflix’s September 2025 drama House of Guinness drops viewers into 1868 Dublin, where four orphaned siblings hold their family’s legendary brewery in a stranglehold—each hiding secrets that could unravel everything. The cast brings together established Irish performers and rising stars to portray a family whose real-life wealth and influence still echo today. Here’s the full breakdown of who plays whom, and what their characters actually mean for the story.

Arthur Guinness: Anthony Boyle · Edward Guinness: Louis Partridge · Anne Plunket: Emily Fairn · Release Year: 2025 · Creator: Steven Knight

Where was House of Guinness filmed?

The production filmed extensively in Ireland, leveraging Dublin’s built environment and rural Irish landscapes to recreate the mid-19th-century setting. The decision to shoot on location rather than on soundstages grounds the series in authentic period architecture and gives the Guinness family drama a tactile sense of place.

Filming spots in Ireland

While the production has not released a complete location breakdown, Irish film industry sources confirm Dublin and surrounding County Wicklow served as primary shooting zones. Historic properties in Dublin’s Georgian districts—now rare in Europe—provided the exterior facades for the Guinness family home.

Real locations used

The production team reportedly used a combination of preserved period buildings and controlled exterior sites rather than extensive set construction. This approach mirrors recent period dramas like The Last Duel and The Banshees of Inisherin, where authentic Irish locations carry narrative weight.

Bottom line: Louis Partridge as Edward embodies how the brewery’s gravitational pull affects even those who try to resist—his performance grounds the series’ authenticity in real Dublin architecture.

Is House of Guinness a true story?

The series draws loosely from the real Guinness family’s rise in 19th-century Ireland, though the narrative itself is fictionalized. Creator Steven Knight has structured the story around actual historical figures—Arthur, Edward, and Anne among them—while inventing the specific conflicts, relationships, and plotlines that drive the drama.

Basis in real events

The Guinness family did hold enormous economic and social sway in Dublin following the death of the brewery founder. Historical records confirm that inheritance disputes, religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants, and the rise of Fenian activism all affected Irish commercial families of that era. The series uses these documented pressures as its foundation.

Guinness family history

The real Benjamin Lee Guinness, who died in 1855, built the brewery into an empire before passing control to his sons. His children did navigate the complicated terrain of Irish commerce, family obligation, and political upheaval—exactly the tensions the series dramatizes with fictionalized stakes.

Is the Guinness family still wealthy?

The Guinness family is no longer directly involved in the brewery—the company went public in 1886 and eventually merged with Diageo—but descendants of the founding family retain substantial wealth through diversified holdings, real estate, and investment structures.

Current net worth

Estimates of the extended Guinness family’s collective net worth vary considerably, with some sources placing it in the hundreds of millions to low billions range when accounting for charitable foundations, private holdings, and generational asset distribution.

Family fortune today

The most visible modern Guinness descendant is probably artist and philanthropist Damien Hirst (married into the family), whose own net worth reportedly exceeds £500 million. Beyond him, the family’s wealth is more diffuse and less publicly tracked than it was during the brewery’s peak dominance.

Who did Edward Guinness marry?

Edward Cecil Guinness, the real historical figure, married Louisa Jane Croft in 1871. She came from a prominent English trading family. Their union reflected the common practice among wealthy Victorian families of solidifying commercial ties through marriage.

Edward Cecil Guinness biography

Edward Cecil Guinness (1847–1927) inherited a share of the brewery empire alongside his brothers. He later established Guinness South African Breweries and accumulated significant real estate holdings, including Grosvenor House in London.

Spouse details

Louisa Jane Croft’s marriage to Edward brought English capital and connections into the Guinness orbit. The couple had five children, with their descendants scattered across Britain, South Africa, and Australia.

Were the Guinness family Catholic or Protestant?

The Guinness family was Protestant, specifically Anglican, which shaped their social position in 19th-century Ireland where the Protestant minority held disproportionate economic and political power.

Family religion

The founding Guinnesses came from a Protestant Anglo-Irish background—part of the “Ascendancy” class that dominated Irish commerce, land ownership, and governance despite representing only a small fraction of the population. This religious identity influenced their business partnerships, social networks, and political allegiances throughout the 1800s.

Historical context

Being Protestant in 1860s Ireland carried both privilege and complication. The Anglican establishment controlled most major institutions, but rising Catholic commercial wealth and Fenian activism increasingly challenged that dominance. The series uses this tension explicitly: Ellen Cochrane is a Fenian organiser, and the family’s Protestant identity creates friction with Irish nationalist characters.

Main cast: The Guinness siblings

The series centers on four siblings navigating their father’s death and the future of the brewery. Anthony Boyle leads the ensemble as Arthur, the eldest son whose political ambitions threaten to destabilize the family.

• Anthony Boyle as Arthur Guinness — Boyle, an Irish actor previously seen in the Emmy-winning miniseries Masters of Air and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, plays the eldest sibling with a volatile streak. Arthur is politically ambitious and struggles with the burden of legacy.
• Louis Partridge as Edward Guinness — Partridge, who is English, portrays the youngest sibling tasked with running the brewery. His Edward is business-minded, socially isolated, and more comfortable with ledgers than people.
• Emily Fairn as Anne Plunket — Fairn, Liverpool-born and known for roles in Mary & George and Black Mirror, plays the only daughter. Anne cannot inherit due to 19th-century inheritance laws—a source of deep resentment that drives much of her arc.
• Fionn O’Shea as Benjamin Lee Guinness II — O’Shea, whose credits include Normal People and Dating Amber, plays the middle son. Benjamin is an alcoholic and gambling addict whose recklessness endangers the family’s already fragile position.

Supporting cast and key roles

Beyond the four core siblings, the series populates its world with characters who either enable or threaten the family’s position.

• James Norton as Sean Rafferty — Norton, a BAFTA-nominated actor for Happy Valley, plays the warehouse foreman and head of security. His Rafferty balances loyalty to the family with emerging moral complications.
• Jack Gleeson as Byron Hedges — Gleeson, best known as Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones, portrays a distant cousin and business partner who is also an illegitimate family member bridging conservative and Fenian factions.
• Niamh McCormack as Ellen Cochrane — A Fenian organiser committed to the Irish Republican cause, Ellen’s presence in the household creates dangerous crosscurrents.
• Dervla Kirwan as Agnes Guinness — The aunt to the siblings provides a stabilizing influence—or a calculating one, depending on perspective.
• Michael McElhatton as John Potter — The family butler has seen more than he admits.
• Danielle Galligan as Lady Olivia Hedges-White — An aristocrat who marries Arthur, potentially shifting the family’s political alliances.
• Ann Skelly as Adelaide Guinness — Skelly, known for The Nevers and The Sandman, plays a cousin of the siblings.
• Michael Colgan as Reverend Henry Grattan — Colgan, seen in Chernobyl and Say Nothing, portrays the siblings’ uncle.

The character dynamics at stake

House of Guinness layers its drama around competing loyalties: family against ambition, tradition against progress, Protestant establishment against Irish nationalist fervor.

In 1868, the Guinness family patriarch is dead in Dublin; his four children, each with dark secrets to hide, hold the brewery’s fate in their hands. — Rotten Tomatoes

Anne’s exclusion from inheritance due to her gender creates one fracture line. Benjamin’s self-destructive behavior creates another. Edward’s social isolation makes him unable to build the alliances his siblings can. Arthur’s political ambitions put the family’s economic stability at risk in a volatile Ireland. Byron Hedges, as an illegitimate cousin, embodies the unresolved question of who truly belongs inside the family tent.

Irish actor Anthony Boyle—who has previously appeared in the Emmy-winning miniseries Masters of Air—stars as Arthur Guinness. — Harper’s Bazaar

Related reading: Cast of Fubar (TV Series)

Anthony Boyle’s Arthur Guinness leads a stellar lineup that captures the dynasty’s rise, much as explored in the House of Guinness cast evolution through actors’ historical ties.

Frequently asked questions

Anthony Boyle’s Arthur demonstrates how the familiar formula of sibling rivalries, dynastic pressure, and forbidden relationships gains weight when filtered through a genuinely influential historical family. The cast, drawn heavily from Irish theater and television, grounds the melodrama in recognizable human behavior.