“I have a birthmark on my lower back, the very bottom of my spine, which is obviously meant to be the way that you died in your past life,” she explained.
Her theory, from there, gets more detailed. Brown said she believes the mark connects to a wartime death involving a sword.
“In war… to kill people but make them have a painful death, they would put swords up people’s spines,” she said. “So they were completely paralysed, but they would obviously kind of die, and that’s how I think I died.”
That is a lot of backstory for one birthmark, but she delivered it with confidence.
Her former self, according to Brown
Brown then filled in the rest of the identity. She said she thinks she “might have been a soldier,” before adding that this person was “definitely a man.”
Then came the detail that sent the whole theory in an unexpected direction.
“Hopefully a closeted gay man,” she said.
Brown did not name a specific war, country, army or century. The sword detail narrows things down only in the broadest possible sense, which is helpful if your filing system for history is “old and dangerous.”
Partridge, meanwhile, was not interested in playing along.
When asked if he knew who he had been in a previous life, he answered: “No, I don’t believe in past lives.”
Brown took that as the end of the topic: “Okay, well, that ends that then.”
Louis Partridge was not buying the reincarnation angle
The exchange worked because of the contrast. Brown gave a fully formed reincarnation profile, complete with injury mechanics and personal identity. Partridge offered the spiritual equivalent of a closed door.
The two actors are currently linked on screen through Enola Holmes 3, where Brown returns as Enola Holmes and Partridge plays Lord Tewkesbury. Their interview detour into past lives was not exactly franchise lore, but it showed the easy, slightly chaotic dynamic that can make promotional interviews more memorable than the official talking points.
The conversation later moved from past lives to what happens after death. Brown said she believes people go to heaven when they die.
Brown has handled swords on screen too
For anyone looking for a neat showbiz coincidence, Brown has already had some sword-adjacent practice in this lifetime.
In 2024, she starred in Netflix’s fantasy film Damsel, playing a princess who discovers she has been offered as a sacrifice to a dragon by the royal family she married into. Her character eventually fights back, using a sword among other means.
That does not prove anything about reincarnation, obviously. It does, however, mean Brown has now connected swords, survival and dramatic death across at least one Netflix film and one very unusual interview answer.
Whether her theory is spiritual conviction, playful speculation or simply a committed answer to a strange question, the result is the same: Brown left Partridge looking like the most grounded person in the room, which is not always the expected outcome in a celebrity interview about the afterlife.
