‘It was a gift’: Everything Leo Woodall has said about playing Dexter in One Day

Leo Woodall is everyone’s white boy of the month right now. Just when we thought we couldn’t love him after we saw him in The White Lotus, he had to go and break everyone’s hearts in One Day.

Getting over the fact that it turns out he’s a nepo baby from a long line of actors, Leo has said an awful lot about playing his character Dexter in the show. He’s revealed the hardest scenes to film, how he saw bits of his younger self in the character and how he nearly lost the part when he forgot to take off his neck tattoo from The White Lotus.

So this is everything Leo Woodall has said about playing Dexter Mayhew in One Day:

He said playing Dex allowed him to ‘get closure over his younger self’

Playing Dexter, Leo realised there were parts of his younger self he was able to get some closure over. He told GQ: “Dexter wants to be cool and tries to be, as much as he can. I felt that connection. There was a lot of him that I think is definitely a heightened, much younger me that wanted to be cool and accepted,” he says. “It was a gift in the way it allowed me to get that out of my system.”

He said the show will ‘make you fucking want to jump off a balcony’

Speaking about the experience of watching the show, he said: “After watching One Day you will want to call your parents, reach out to your ex and check your blind spots while cycling around Hackney. It’s a show that will make you laugh, hopefully. And make you fucking want to jump off a balcony.” He was right on that one let’s be honest.

Filming up Arthur’s Seat was a ‘horrible experience’

Speaking to Elle, Leo said the hardest scene to film was up Arthur’s Seat at the start of the show. Not because it was overly emotional or anything, but because he was really unwell. He said: “The hardest scene to film, for me, was a day on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. We were at the top of this big, big, almost mountain. And I had food poisoning. So we had to do the entire scene with me… you know… really not having a good time.”

He added: “But I couldn’t come off the mountain because we’d lose all the day [of filming]. So, I just had to kind of plough through.

“But it was a horrible experience. ”

He called another key scene ‘horrible’

It might look like the cats are having the best time ever filming based on these behind-the-scenes pics, but Leo revealed to Bazaar that there was another scene he found “horrible” to film. He said: “Episode seven, where they go for dinner and he’s just absent and unpleasant [to Emma], was horrible. It was fun to film because, I think, the episode was written so well, and [director] John Hardwick was so brilliant at getting the best out of us, and it felt almost like a piece of theatre, but it wasn’t fun to be that unpleasant. I’ve had a few people who have seen that and gone, ‘I can’t look at you the same way after that.’ And I agree! That was a tough one.”

He called Dex ‘a tit’

Even though he said he saw parts of his past self in his character, Leo admitted that after filming the show he agrees his character Dexter can be a “tit”, due to the way he treats the people that love him. He said: “I know they say don’t judge a character, but in retrospect, I can say he’s a tit. He’s getting a bit more fame, he’s enjoying it, but there’s a little part of him that’s convincing himself that he’s enjoying it.”

He doesn’t want the show to be compared to Normal People

There might be similarities between One Day and Normal People and indeed Paul Mescal and Leo Woodall. But apparently, he doesn’t want the two shows to be compared. “Normal People was a masterpiece, but I don’t think it’s that comparable. It’s its own unique thing, it was shot so beautifully. I don’t want to be compared to that,” he said.

“One Day has a comedy aspect, but then it goes dark, it swings. We’ll see if it has the effect of erasing my anonymity like it did with Paul Mescal. I hope it doesn’t, but I really want the show to do well.”

He revealed his favourite line from the show

When asked about his favourite lines from the entire show, Leo said: “There’s a line where Emma says ‘I thought I’d finally got rid of you’ and Dexter says ‘I don’t think you can’ and I think it’s very sweet.”

He spoke about how they used makeup to make him look older by the end of the series

Speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live one day after the show landed on Netflix, Leo spoke about how they managed to age him twenty years throughout filming, and what it was like using “dodgy phones” and “typewriters” to accurately portray the 90s. ‘They gave me crows feet and a couple of grey hairs. I tried adding a walk that made me look older and they immediately told me “You’re 40, not 80”,’ he joked.

He said he would be a PE teacher if he wasn’t an actor

Okay so, not technically about playing Dex but it was too cute not to include. In an interview for Netflix’s TikTok account, Leo said he’d be a PE teacher if he wasn’t an actor.

He nearly lost the role because of his The White Lotus neck tattoo

Leo did the audition for One Day whilst he was still filming The White Lotus where he, of course, has a massive neck tattoo that says “cowabunga”. Speaking on Lorraine, he said he nearly missed out on the role of Dex as he forgot to wipe the tattoo off and it doesn’t really fit the vibe of Dex.

He said: “I flew back to London to do my first sort of in-person meeting and I’d forgotten to take off my neck tattoo. I mean I say forgot but I kinda liked it, I thought it was kinda cool. The producers had no idea what was going on, they thought they liked me and then I walked in with this sort of huge neck tattoo which wasn’t quite right. But then it just started rubbing off”

He revealed how he struggled when they first started filming

“I struggled at the beginning of One Day,” Leo admitted to Vogue. “I was struck by how much pressure I felt being a lead. I didn’t know if I should behave like the captain of a sports team. And I struggled with not having any kind of moment to myself, like you can’t tie your own shoelace or spit your own gum out.”

One Day is available to watch on Netflix now. For more like everything Leo Woodall said about playing Dex and for all the latest Netflix drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

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