Jack Falahee's anxiety has been at an all-time high lately. He repeatedly demonstrated this in various ways — both verbally ("It makes me anxious") and physically (he tugged at his sleeves, his hair, his face, and anything he could get his hands on) — over the course of an hour-long lunch at Café Stella in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. And, given the millions of people who now know his name, drool over his body, and position him as the face of TV's sexual revolution, it's easy to understand why the 25-year-old actor has been feeling little uneasy.

In less than two months, Falahee has gone from anonymous actor to bona fide television obsession, thanks to his scene-stealing and "eye-watering" performance as Connor Walsh on the Shonda Rhimes–executive produced How to Get Away With Murder, ABC's legal thriller about five students who cover up a murder, armed with knowledge gleaned from their intimidating law professor Annalise Keating (Viola Davis). With a libido as powerful as his mind, Connor has unapologetically used his sexuality to bend men to his will and manipulated everyone blocking his path to career advancement — the Cheshire Cat smirk plastered across his face demonstrating just how much Connor savors every ounce of duplicity. It's an archetype America is not used to seeing on television, particularly not from a man.

In the wake of Murder's phenomenal debut — 21 million people watched the premiere with Live+7 ratings factored in — the show's sexual content has been celebrated, analyzed, scrutinized, and vilified, while Connor has quickly become a character that fans cannot stop talking about (Falahee's performance has been called "simultaneously brilliant, arrogant, manipulative, sexually predatory, and totally irresistible"). So it makes sense that Falahee, at the center of this maelstrom, is experiencing some intense anxiety.

"Given the success of the show, everything's been kind of 0 to 60 [and] it's much more vulnerable than I thought it would be," Falahee told BuzzFeed News, offering what can be seen as a sort of confession about his insta-fame and viewers' sudden desire for details of his personal life. It's an area that Falahee most definitely does not want to talk about, strangers' speculation on his sexuality — a subject he has no intention of, or interest in, discussing.

"It's a really bizarre thing in our culture that people want to know that," he said, as he nervously tugged at the sleeve of his black T-shirt. "You see these people in film and on television and you feel like something is owed to you to know the intimacies of their lives, which is… I dunno." Falahee added that it could be tough for audiences to see him as another character if they've pored over every detail of his personal life. "Like Tom Cruise," he suggested.

The drive to keep his personal and professional lives separate meshes with his desire to remain in a bubble when it comes to the pandemonium encircling his white-hot television show. "I try not to read reviews or look at the ratings because it gives me anxiety, but it's been wonderful to hear how much fans love the show and Connor," he said. "It's one thing to be able to go to work every day and be thankful for having a job in an industry that's so hard, but it's mindboggling to think that I'm doing what I want every day and I'm on a hit TV show. "

And, so far, Falahee's daily routine involves the placement of his darkly charismatic character right at the center of a major shift in terms of depicting sexual content on television, one that both Falahee and the show's creator seem slightly uncomfortable discussing.