To say it’s been an incredible year for Leo Woodall is something of an understatement. The 27-year-old actor has already filmed the new Apple TV+ series “Prime Target,” is currently filming James Vanderbilt’s feature drama “Nuremberg” alongside Rami Malek and Russell Crowe, among others, and will follow that up with a pivotal role in the fourth “Bridget Jones” movie. Oh, and Woodall earned critical acclaim in the Netflix limited series “One Day,” which was a major hit following its debut on the service this past February.
READ MORE: Ambika Mod answers (almost) all your questions about “One Day” [Interview]
Adapted from David Nicholls‘ 2009 novel, “One Day” follows the decades-long romance between Dexter (Woodall) and Emma (Ambika Mod) following a graduation night of passion in 1988. Each episode of the series visits the characters one year later until it ends in 2004. The U.K.-set show hit the Nielsen Top 10 and No. 1 in the U.S. the week following its release. It got plenty of buzz, but it didn’t seem to be bigger than Woodall’s run as part of “The White Lotus” season two in 2022. It turns out it was. Especially for Woodall, who realized he had to take a break from checking out viewer’s reactions to the show online.
“‘White Lotus’ was a crazy moment, but I was a part of this big ensemble, and the show without me would’ve been good,” Woodall explains. “It didn’t ride on me in any way, in my opinion. It would’ve been a huge hit anyway. But with ‘One Day,’ to me, it’s Ambika, and it’s the story. And what are people going to think? Because it’s a new show. There was the movie, and there was the book. But I dunno. It was nice to see that people were reacting to it, but it was also intense. I don’t think either of us were expecting it to have such a moment.”
Over the course of our interview, Woodall does a deep dive into his emotional connection to Dexter, his nervousness of playing a 90s television presenter, how relieved he was to shoot the final episode early in production, the audition kiss that didn’t make the final cut, and much, much more.
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The Playlist: What were your thoughts when this project came your way?
Leo Woodall: I felt like I saw my way into Dexter, and I put a tape [audition] down a day or so after I was told about it. And when you are taping a lot or auditioning a lot,[and] when a job doesn’t go your way and when you don’t hear back, you’re like, “Well, the best thing I can do is just try and have fun with this.” So, I remember one of the scenes was the Primrose Hills scene in episode three, and I laid on the floor, and I got my sunglasses out, and I put on a sort of sexy flow shirt and just had fun, and I was like, “This would be so good to play. It.” Also, there’s the fun side of him, and then there’s the really hard stuff and the times where I knew I’d have to go incredibly deep, and they don’t always happen. And especially once I knew the story, it felt like all of those moments of really putting yourself through it were all earned and they weren’t gratuitous in any kind of way. They were just so real and heartbreaking. So early on I was like, “I really want to do this now. It’s just about trying to convince them that I can do this.”
Have you read the book?
No, I hadn’t read the book. There were two of my best friends, it’s their favorite book, and my mom and sister had read it, so they’d all been able to tell me early on what it’s about. And I watched the movie to kind of get my own version of the story before doing my first audition. And it was only after they thought, “O.K., yeah, we want to see you again.” I was like, “O.K., read the damn book there.”
Listen, I don’t want to read books either if I don’t have to.
I never said I didn’t want to read. [Laughs.]
I shouldn’t have insinuated that. [Laughs.] Ambika how you both auditioned together as well as with other actors. Did you feel any chemistry when you auditioned? Can you even tell in an audition that you might have chemistry with someone?
I mean, yes and no. I’d seen her work in “This is Going to Hurt” and was already a fan of hers. She had no clue who I was, and so I already went in wanting to impress her. But I think we had a banner on that first day. I certainly tried very hard, but there was a moment in the second scene that we did. It was the wedding scene where they’d gone off to have a long chat, and a lot is revealed, and there’s a kiss in the scene, which we obviously didn’t do in the [actual show], but we had to get very close, and I’d just done that with two other potential Emmas and was about to do it with a fourth. So, it’s the moment you’ve just met this person, and I felt like there was something connected, and there was good chemistry between my Dex and her in that moment. Whether Rachel Sheridan, the casting director, or Molly Manners, the director felt that too? That was the moment. I don’t know. But yeah, I think once we got our roles, we just decided to meet up and hang out, and we were lucky that we became friends very quickly.
I know that most of the show was shot sequentially. Did that make it easier for you to sort of arc out the 20 years for him, or is that not something you sort of thought about on a day-to-day basis?
You have to keep it in mind. I had to keep his arc in mind, but you can’t play the arc in a way. I think every episode was its own little mini-story. So, the best hope was to just do what we do, what our characters were living on that day. And then I think you don’t really do it when you’re acting, but you remember at one point that there are professional editors and the director who are going to cut everything together and really mold the story after you’ve performed it. You just kind of got to do what you have to do for the moment.
The one exception to filming sequentially was the final episode and it meant you had to tackle those very emotional scenes early on. Was that difficult? Would you have preferred that that was at the end?
No, it was so relieved when a lot of that was over. I think, luckily, I’d done four or five auditions for the part beforehand, and some of those auditions involved me doing some of those scenes. So, I’d already dipped my toe in that part of Dexter’s life. So, when it came to doing it, it was kind of already was kind of there. I just needed to not mess it up. And I think doing it early, kind of in a way, was probably quite helpful. I think it was a seven-month shoot, and it was grueling, and it was long, and it was wonderful, but there’s a tank, and I think if I’d done them all at the end, I wonder if I would’ve had enough in the tank to do that whole episode. I don’t know.
Oh, damn. I know that Dexter has a lot of ups and downs in his life, but why do you think he waits so long to finally tell Emma he cares for her?
I don’t think he waits that long. I think he doesn’t realize it. I think he’s blind to it for most of, I don’t know, the first half of their whole story, not the whole time, but there are moments early on where he knows how he feels about her, but I think he becomes incredibly distracted by his own ambitions, his own grief, his own sense of self. I think [when] he is in his twenties, he sees his life panning out very differently. And I think there comes a point in his life where he realizes that he didn’t even really want it to pan out the way he thought it would, and that actually, he realizes that the thing he really cares about and the thing that he needs is her and he just hopes it’s not too late.
The series is effectively a two-decade-long romance, but also for his character, especially since it’s sort of about him becoming an adult. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I think as much as the show is a love story, it’s also not. It’s about two people growing up and it’s about how these two people navigate their own lives and then how their lives intertwine and how they navigate that together. And Emma’s sense of self is a lot stronger from the beginning, which is, I think, partly why he’s so enamored by her. But for him, he’s done a lot of growing up to do. He’s got a lot of mistakes to make before he finds himself, I think.
One of the things that he does is he wants to be a television presenter. I haven’t watched a lot of current British television, but I’ve seen clips of old shows, and it’s very American MTV in the ’90s in some respects. Did you have to do research for that and were those scenes fun?
I looked up a bunch of 90s television presenters and saw what it was like, and it’s so wacky, and honestly, I was really nervous for those scenes. I was really nervous because not only is it like me playing a character who’s playing a character and trying to do so as confidently and coolly and sexually as he can, but just me as Leo, which maybe helped me, I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do, really. I think my first taste of it was in episode three, they’re doing a tape, and he’s in the war. He’s like two teams, two eight Zeds. And that was a good introduction. I was anxious about it. We were just filming in the middle of London, and people were walking by, and I’m like, “Oh no, what are they going to think of me?” But yeah, the episode where he goes live on tele and just completely messes it up was really nerve-wracking. Especially because there’s like a hundred people roughly my age who are in the business and they’re all looking at me. So, my respect for TV presenters grew a lot.
You’ll not be doing any TV presenting on the side in the future.
I will not. I think that idea, if it ever was even born, is dead.
It’s dead. The way you describe it, it sounds like you were already embarrassed for your character. Do you get emotionally invested with your characters?
Of course, you have to. I think, particularly playing a character like Dexter, there’s just no world in which I could have faked it. There’s no version of doing those scenes, particularly in episode 14, and in episode five, where he is at the train station and in the Paris episode. He goes through a lot. He just really, really goes through a lot. And some of the scenes you read and you know that you’re going to have to really just sacrifice parts of yourself to tell the story. And then there are other scenes that you don’t realize until you’re doing it, and you’re like, “Oh, okay, wow. Yeah, this is hard. This is rough.” I felt sorry for most of that shoot because he does get kind of a, well, he gets a bad rap. He deserves it half the time. He doesn’t behave very well. He can be unpleasant or just selfish, but I just always felt like he was actually quite insecure, whether he realized it or not. He was fragile, and some of the worst things that can happen to not a person, but the things that people go through that they wouldn’t wish on others happened to him. And there’s not a lot of people in his life that give him a hug for it.
Was there one sequence or one scene in particular that you were most worried about filming beforehand?
Yeah, but this is the funny thing about filming something, and then it gets cut together. Is that your idea of what the big scene in quotes or the thing that you’re going to often, it doesn’t work out that way. Luckily, we shot it early on, but for me, it was a scene where he comes home on the first anniversary of that death. He goes to Sylvie’s, and he’s a wreck, and he’s just a completely broken man on her bathroom floor. And I remember thinking, “O.K, yeah, this is going to be rough.” But then you watch the episode, and actually, it works. The first year isn’t the hardest one to watch, in a way. So, your idea of the pinnacle points in the story might not always be the bigger picture, if that makes sense.
No, it does. The show was a massive hit on Netflix globally and even hit number one in the US. I don’t know if you go on social media often or if you check reactions, but did you see how passionate people were about the show?
Yeah, I remember the first week, the first couple of days I was checking. I was like, “Are people even watching it? What do people think?” Luckily it was catching fire quite quickly. And then, after a minute, you’re like, “Actually, O.K., I’m glad it’s doing well, but I’m going to stop looking at all the reactions” because you don’t need to see everyone’s reactions to it. And it was the first time for me really being on social media and having a moment, and I was like, “Oh yeah, no, no, no, thanks. No, no thanks.” [Laughs.] It was so lovely having the reaction to it, but it’s a different thing when you’re on the other end of it.
Did it feel more intense than your experience with “White Lotus”?
Way more. Way more.
Really?
Yeah. “White Lotus” was a crazy moment, but I was a part of this big ensemble, and the show without me would’ve been good. It didn’t ride on me in any way, in my opinion. It would’ve been a huge hit anyway. But with “One Day,” to me, it’s Ambika, and it’s the story. And what are people going to think? Because it’s a new show. There was the movie, and there’s the book. But I dunno. It was nice to see that people were reacting to it, but it was also intense. I don’t think either of us were expecting it to have such a moment.
“One Day” is available on Netflix worldwide.