Photographer: Ben Parks, Stylist: Donna Wallace, Groomer: Jason Lawrence
Leo Woodall is telling me, a little hesitantly, about all the ways his life has changed. ‘I don’t really get the Tube anymore,’ he says, huddled away in a secluded booth at the Electric Diner in Notting Hill, explaining that women will be inches away from his face (as is customary on the London Underground), professing their admiration. ‘One told me her husband gets really jealous. It was just so uncomfortable.’ He pauses, pulling up the grey polo-neck jumper he’s wearing so that it hides his face, which is already partially concealed by a baseball cap, leaving behind only those twinkling, angelic eyes. ‘I’m grateful it’s winter now, because I’ve got this thing.’
Minutes later, almost as if on cue, a young woman walks past, smartphone held by her side. She’s filming us both. Woodall clocks it instantly. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, laughing. ‘You think you’re being subtle – you’re not!’
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This kind of thing happens a lot to the London-born actor. At 28, he is fast becoming one of the most exciting stars of his generation. Woodall’s breakthrough came via season two of Mike White’s HBO drama The White Lotus, in which he played the cheeky Essex lad who took part in one of television's most talked-about scenes – Google it. Next, came the big hitter: a turn as the endearing but exasperating Dexter Mayhew in the Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ bestseller One Day. Switching between swaggering bravado and bruised vulnerability, Woodall’s performance saw him propelled into the public eye with a ferocity he’s clearly still getting used to.
‘It did all go a bit nuts for me,’ he recalls. ‘At first it was like, “Oh, this is cool”, but pretty quickly it just started to feel icky.’ He understands the attachment fans feel, particularly in light of a series as emotive as One Day, noting that some interactions can be ‘lovely’. But, occasionally, the attention crosses the line.
It’s hard to imagine it will quieten down soon. Woodall’s latest project is Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the fourth film in the iconic franchise based on Helen Fielding’s novel of the same name. Woodall plays the eponymous boy, Roxster: a strapping 29-year-old park warden who meets the now 51-year-old Bridget when she’s stuck up a tree in Hampstead Heath with her children, Mabel and Billy. The diner we're meeting in today is where their date scene was filmed.
The film takes place four years after the death of Bridget’s husband Mark Darcy. Run ragged by life as a single mother and under pressure to re-enter the dating scene, our ever-chaotic heroine is struggling. Grief looms large, which lends emotional heft to a charming script that feels very old-school romcom. I cried a lot. Providing light relief is Woodall’s Roxster, who at one point tells Bridget, quite earnestly, that she can’t be older than 35.
‘I must’ve seen the first film at least 20 times,’ says Woodall, a self-described romcom fanatic. Was it surreal to work with Renée Zellweger? ‘She’s a dream,’ he says. ‘Everyone on set not only loved her but felt safe with her. You expect someone that celebrated to be a little difficult or have an ego, but she’s just the loveliest.’
The only downside was that while filming, Woodall didn’t get a chance to meet Hugh Grant, one of his heroes, who reprises his role as Daniel Cleaver. ‘I guess I’ll meet him at the premiere, which I know he’ll love doing,’ he says, smiling, referring to Grant’s famously cantankerous red-carpet presence.
Woodall would be a fun date. He talks softly but enthusiastically, with a warm, labrador-esque energy. His answers are punctuated with questions of his own. Lots of them. He pokes fun at me, too. When I tell him I wasn’t scared by Robert Eggers' remake of Nosferatu even though I’m not exactly tough, he quips: ‘It sounds like you are, Olivia.’ He would, I suspect, have chemistry with a lamppost. And it’s exactly this that makes him so very watchable on our screens.
The film touches on a major cultural talking point: age-gap relationships. With Babygirl, The Idea of You and now the new Bridget, the discourse is inescapable. What does Woodall make of it all? ‘It's not a new thing,’ he says. ‘Relationships such as this exist everywhere. But I guess people take more notice because they aren’t used to it. So, hopefully, the more we see them on screen, the more we'll get used to them.’
There are plenty of references to classic Bridget moments: big knickers, blue cocktails and a dinner party with the ‘Smug Marrieds’ that is so on the nose it works. The standout, though, harks back to the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen's book was an inspiration for Fielding): Roxster dives into a pool to save a drowning chihuahua, only to emerge with his wet white T-shirt clinging to his torso.
Being a heart-throb doesn’t come naturally, however. ‘It’s pressure, man. I’m someone who, when I’m not working – like at Christmas – just wants to sit at home and get fat. Even with Roxster, there's no reason why he should be so ripped. I don’t think I am that ripped.’ Fans may disagree. Nevertheless, he continues: ‘It’s just hard for me because I f*cking love pizza and beer. But for this I had to really go to the gym; it’s part of the job. Then I saw Chiwetel [Ejiofor, who co-stars in the film] take his top off, and he was so buff. And I was thinking, ‘You bastard.’ I don’t even think he went to the gym!’
We exchange cultural recommendations and find many things in common, including Taylor Swift, Shrek and The OC– when Woodall saw Adam Brody at last year’s Emmys, he bounded right up to him. ‘That was a big deal,’ he says, grinning.
After an hour, we go next-door to The Duke of Wellington — the iconic Notting Hill pub that made a cameo in the beloved romcom of the same name — for non-alcoholic beers. ‘Is it bad luck to cheers?’ he asks, extending his bottle to tap mine. Neither of us are doing Dry January but, given it’s 1pm, I have deadlines and Woodall needs to go to a photo-shoot, we abstain. I mention his recent Loewe campaign. 'Did you see the gold trousers?’ he asks, smiling. ‘I’ve started to dress a little better now.’
Woodall grew up in Shepherd's Bush, the youngest of three siblings. His parents divorced when he was two and his mother later married the actor Alexander Morton. Woodall’s father Andrew is also an actor. He’s close to them all (‘I’m lucky like that’) and currently lives with his older brother Gabriel. They have a faulty fridge full of milk and a ‘giant dome of ice stuck at the back’.
He has some industry friends, including his One Day co-star Ambika Mod, but is closest to the friends he met at drama school – ArtsEd, which counts Will Young and Simone Ashley among its alumni – with whom he has just spent three days ringing in the new year in Essex.
Of course, there’s also his relationship with Meghann Fahy, whom he met on the set of The White Lotus. ‘We’re very good at keeping it as private as we can,’ he says. ‘To me, that’s the only way. You see public relationships all the time slapped all over social media and I can’t imagine that’s any fun. [Your relationship] should be a safe space, so I think letting people into it is completely counter-productive.’
Woodall has an exciting year ahead. As well as Bridget, he’s fronting the Apple TV+ crime drama Prime Target, which has just been released. Later on, there’ll be Nuremberg, a film set in Germany following World War II, also starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek then Turner, a crime thriller also starring Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman, about a gifted piano tuner who realises his precision skills also make him a master safecracker. Is he working on anything else at the moment? ‘No, I’m unemployed, mate!’ he says with a laugh. What does he do to wind down? ‘Stick some Gavin & Stacey on, watch a horror film, or go and meet some friends,’ he says. ‘I’m definitely someone who likes to live in the moment, which is why I’m so shit on my phone.’
Before we wrap up, I ask Woodall about his greatest industry role model. ‘Bryan Cranston,’ he says, without missing a beat. ‘Breaking Bad is my ride-or-die show, and I love the way he's navigated his career. Instead of being in the limelight and getting caught up in all that, he has just kept a lid on it and made some really good work.’ I’m confident the same will soon be said of Woodall.
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