Leo Woodall

One Day: How director Molly Manners revamped a classic love story for a new generation

Manners is the lead director behind the latest iteration of David Nicholls’ 2009 bestseller, the Netflix series One Day. Viewers get to know Emma, a working-class girl from Leeds, and Dexter, a privileged boy from London, through just one day a year, over a 20-year span. Manners’ role included setting the tone for the series as a whole, finding her ‘Emma’ and ‘Dexter’, choosing locations, and creating a visual language for the two of them, both when they’re together, and in the years where they’re separated.

Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall play star-crossed lovers in first images of new One Day adaptation

Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall stand facing each other as Emma and Dexter in One Day, while Dexter holds Emma's head in his hands

In the debut images accompanying the announcement, Ambika Mod (This Is Going to Hurt) and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus series two) are seen starring as the central couple, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, across the places and decades of their love story.

They meet on 15th July 1988, the night of their graduation from university. They separate the next morning, but the chapters check in on them both on that one ordinary day for every year that follows.