This post was originally published on February 6. We’re republishing it now that Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is available to stream.
Leo Woodall enters a charming café in London’s most charming neighborhood, Primrose Hill, one recent January morning, flashing a smile so contagious it sets off a domino effect of grins among the wait staff. He spots me sitting in the back and beelines for the table, making the kind of direct, warm eye contact usually reserved for the final “lay it all on the line” moment in a romantic comedy. He sits down; peels off a big, cozy gray cable-knit turtleneck sweater he describes as “Colin Firth–esque”; neatens his tousled hair (only to tousle it in a different, equally appealing way); fills my water glass before filling his own; leans back in his chair; and admits that he isn’t sure he’s cut out for rom-com greatness.
“I love rom-coms and comedies,” he reassures me. (Notting Hill is his favorite.) But, he says, “I don’t know if I’m ready to step into that space yet,” a statement as absurd as LeBron James suggesting he may not be well suited for basketball. A still-grinning waiter approaches to inquire about our breakfast order. Woodall asks for a second bottle of water — nothing else. He doesn’t like to eat early in the morning (it’s 11) but says I should order food if I want. I tell him I’m not eating alone. It seems we’re at an impasse: Can two adults subsist on room-temperature water and banter alone?
Given the company, it’s possible. And the reason it’s possible (and the reason I will spend our extremely well-hydrated breakfast interrogating his prior statement) is that, so far, Woodall’s career has been built on his unique ability to embody a specific sort of love interest: the lovable menace you can’t help but fall for. In the second season of The White Lotus, he harnessed the dark charisma of every contestant ever to appear on Love Island to play Jack, an Essex boy who seduces Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), an unwitting mark. Despite Jack almost murdering her and definitely having sex with other questionable people, Woodall managed to turn a Lothario who is guaranteed to ruin you (sexually and otherwise) into a surprisingly appealing fantasy of the fuckboy you meet on vacation.
He followed that with a lead role in One Day, last year’s Netflix miniseries based on the 2009 novel, which was the streamer’s most-watched English-language show globally the first full week it premiered. He broke hearts, and found a fan base, as Dexter, an emotionally stunted, alcoholic charmer whose yearslong will-they-or-won’t-they relationship with a college friend (Ambika Mod) ends tragically. “It’s been pointed out that both are just kind of drunken love rats,” he says of the two roles.
In his most recent project, Prime Target, a conspiracy thriller on Apple TV+, he’s a brooding, antisocial mathematician whose one true love is a complicated equation. And he’ll follow that by starring in another thriller, opposite Dustin Hoffman, coming out sometime next year. Even so, with his upcoming role as one of the romantic leads in the fourth and final installment of Bridget Jones, Woodall can’t quite escape his destiny.
He twists his gold pinkie ring absentmindedly, contemplating why he hasn’t just accepted a career full of meet-cutes and happy endings: “I don’t feel passionate about continuing to play only rom-com guys or even romantic guys. It solely depends on —”
He’s going to say “the project” and clarify that he’s open to roles that may have romantic elements but aren’t necessarily romantic leads. But before he can finish the thought, the table to the right of us, occupied by a gaggle of middle-aged women, has erupted into “Happy Birthday” and Woodall can’t resist joining in.
“Happy birthday to you / Happy birthday, dear … what’s your name?” he sings loudly, tempting any of the women to turn around and have their day made. The song ends. He applauds, then leans over and taps my recorder jokingly. “Make sure this goes in the story,” he says.
I fear he’ll never beat the good-at-rom-com allegations.
Woodall, 28, was born and bred in West London. His father was an actor, and his mother studied theater, so presumably, he was able to imagine acting as a job like any other. (The only alternative career he considered was gym teacher.) The show Peaky Blinders was one of the factors that made him decide to pursue acting. He enrolled in the drama program at London’s Arts Educational Schools because he wanted to “shake out all the dust of being inexperienced and come out feeling confident and like I knew what I was doing.”
He graduated in 2019 with an agent and a guest role in one episode of a soap opera. He landed a small part in an indie film, Cherry, then a lead role in Nomad, a sci-fi movie that required him to travel to multiple countries in nine months and that still hasn’t come out. He has pretty much been traveling since. He auditioned for The White Lotus while he was in Spain for a two-week gig on a Peacock fantasy series, Vampire Academy, playing … “Oh God, I can’t remember the character’s name,” he realizes. (It was Adrian.) “I wouldn’t say it was a passion project. It was a ‘Let’s make some money for Christmas presents.’ ”
That show got canceled, but Woodall landed The White Lotus. He had only three weeks to bulk up for the part of muscular, tattooed Jack, fly to Sicily, and jump right into the lives of the rich and despicable alongside a Murderers’ Row of talent. He spent the first two days certain he was messing everything up. The third night in Sicily on set, he thought to himself, Well, you’ve already fucked it, so you’ve got nothing to lose. So just go for it. Just start really playing and making shit up. He improvised one of his character’s most infamously douchey moments (ordering Jägermeister in Spanish, in Italy), a story he repeats in every interview. “I maybe unlocked something in myself on that set that forced me to be much braver and just take it by the horns and run with it,” he tells me.
He’s still calibrating when and how to takes risks as an actor. With Prime Target, he says, “I’d gone into it thinking I was going to do this sort of Daniel Day-Lewis transformation thing with this weird mathematician guy. I gave up on that really quickly.” He realized DDL-ing wasn’t conducive to being a good co-worker: “I can broaden my acting horizons on my own time, but I wouldn’t want to waste everyone else’s time just for my own gratification of trying something new.”
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is the latest in a series of age-gap films focused on an older woman and a younger man. Where Babygirl explores the power dynamics and kink potential of an age difference, and The Idea of You leans on the age gap as a kind of escapist daydream, Bridget Jones offers an Everywoman’s version. Bridget is now in her late 40s or early 50s. Her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), has tragically died; modelizer Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) has been solidly friend-zoned. She’s a single mother of two who hasn’t had sex in four years. Enter Roxster (yes, his name is Roxster), a 20-something park ranger who studies garbology (yes, garbology) and reignites Bridget’s lust for life and love and, well, lust in general. But there’s also a sweetness to the relationship. The film doesn’t harp on Bridget’s perimenopause or mock Roxster’s ignorance of albums that came out before 1996. It’s a relationship that somehow feels viable.
When it came time to cast the titular boy, Woodall was the perfect match, according to Helen Fielding, the author of the Bridget Jones book series and one of the film’s executive producers. She was struck by his performance in The White Lotus. “It’s not just that he’s hot, which of course he is,” she says over Zoom. “You could see that he really loved women and he really saw the woman. He was playing her, but he still saw her.”
He didn’t have to do several audition tapes as he had for One Day. Instead, the week before Woodall’s first day on set, the film’s director, Michael Morris, invited him and Renée Zellweger, who stars as Bridget, over for coffee at his house. It was a brutally hot summer day, and Morris’s house has no air-conditioning. Woodall was nervous. “Anyone can have chemistry, but that also means that anyone can not have chemistry,” he says. “I knew they wouldn’t recast her. So if I couldn’t deliver the chemistry, I was a little fucked there.” He drops his head to the side with a self-deprecating chuckle. They “shot the shit for an hour or so,” he says, talking about dogs (“Renée loves dogs”) and Diet Coke.
Onscreen, the role amounts to an uncomplicated checklist of romantic tropes — quirky meet-cute, good chat, first date, perfectly awkward sex scene — that gives way to a lovely relationship we see mostly in montage: Bridget and Roxster waking up together, strolling, dancing, snacking, playing backyard cricket, and being sweet to children. Woodall’s screen time is brief, but he approached the task of fantasy fulfillment with serious dedication.
He got into the best shape he could prior to the start of filming. Recently, he watched the movie for the first time, and despite his own efforts, he was miffed to realize his co-star who plays Bridget’s other love interest looked just as good for half the work. “Chiwetel Ejiofor is so fucking ripped that it really pissed me off,” Woodall says, joking. “I worked hard. And then that bastard just took his shirt off so casually and looked amazing.” (Frankly, this fourth film should be called Bridget Jones’s Polycule.)
The shoot took place in London last summer. Woodall had his own big trailer for the first time. On days they filmed on Hampstead Heath, fans would cluster around waiting for him to wave (he did). While most of the experience was easy and pleasant, spent romping through the park in summer weather, providing the fantasy involved more effort on some days. There is, improbably, a scene in which he dives into a pool to save a small fluffy dog. It’s an important moment, full of Bridget Jones Easter eggs — invoking Mark Darcy, who was originally a tribute to Mr. Darcy (also played by Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice). It took about 20 takes, many shirt changes, and a stunt double to achieve.
As he describes his time on set, I feel called to ask about the most romantic thing he’s ever done. Woodall furrows his brow for a second. For Christmas this past year, he took a bunch of photos of himself and his partner and had them screen-printed on hoodies. Matching photoprint hoodies is definitely a move, I say. “Oh, I only got them for her. I would never wear one,” he says.
“That’s just too far.”
The “partner” he so coyly refers to is actress Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus, The Perfect Couple, and, most important, The Bold Type). The two met on the set of Lotus in 2022, and their relationship seems to have followed all the tropes of the co-stars–to–partners romance: Around when the second season aired, they appeared on each other’s Instagrams, and fans began analyzing the comments each actor left for the other, speculating that they might be a couple. Shortly after that, they were photographed looking cozy at events and then the paparazzi caught them on a date night. They became public in 2024. Now, the two are so committed he declines to talk about her in interviews. “As fond of you as I already am, I’m probably going to keep it tight, if that’s okay with you,” he says with a smile that makes me forgive the indelicate evasion.
The fascination with his personal life is a recent development. “I think I’m definitely someone who is quite private,” says Woodall. “I’m open with people. I’m not some kind of weird, closed-off recluse, but I do appreciate my privacy. And for a bit after One Day, it felt like it was hanging by a thread.”
One Day’s success in particular has undoubtedly transformed his career. There’s more attention now, for better or for worse, and more perks. “I’m dressing better now,” he explains, and he kicks up his foot to show off his new Blundstones. “I have three pairs of them,” he says proudly. But like many leading men before him, he’s now grappling with what being an internet boyfriend means.
It’s mostly fine, he says, except when people are inappropriate to his face. Obviously, it’s uncomfortable when he’s cornered on the Tube. On bad days, he feels a specific kind of pressure that comes with being the object of widespread desire; it’s hard not to judge himself against the character he’s meant to play. “You immediately hold the mirror up to yourself and go, How do I fit that role? ” he says. On good days, he finds the collective thirst entertaining: “One of the ways that I’ve kept myself grounded is just making a big joke about it.”
I suggest a walk, so we head to the park. More than once, Woodall has to pull me back from oncoming traffic. Eventually, he tells me he has to wind down and get across town for a press junket. I finally admit my phone is broken and I can’t call a cab. Immediately, he whips out his phone and summons an Uber. As we wait, he leans on a fence and takes a perversely deep pull on his vape with the deviance of someone outside a party at 2 a.m. The cab arrives, and he somehow hugs me while putting me in the back of it in one smooth, choreographed move, and he watches until I’ve pulled away. I mean, if the Colin Firth–esque sweater fits.