Leo Woodall on Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy, if He’d Play James Bond – Variety
For a perpetually frustrated single woman, Bridget Jones always had good taste in men. On the big screen 24 years ago, “Bridget Jones’s Diary” cemented Colin Firth’s sex appeal as human rights lawyer Mark Darcy and made us swoon for Hugh Grant all over again as roguish book publisher Daniel Cleaver. So it’s no surprise that the first time 28-year-old Leo Woodall met Bridget Jones, he was uncharacteristically nervous. (OK, technically, he met Renée Zellweger for a coffee.)
“I was just sweaty,” Woodall admits in a posh Claridge’s hotel room in his hometown of London, cringing at the thought that he rode his bike across the city to meet her. “I was like, ‘Why did I do that? Why didn’t I just get the bus?’ And so it took me a minute to gather myself.”
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He had just scored a leading role as free-spirited park ranger Roxster McDuff in “Mad About the Boy,” the fourth installment of the “Bridget Jones” franchise. Woodall knows his way around heartthrob status, turning heads on the second season of “The White Lotus” as a cheeky con man with a surprising relationship to his “uncle,” then breaking hearts as a playboy-turned-romantic in Netflix’s “One Day.” The combination made him an instant “It” boy — so much so that he was offered the part as Bridget’s much younger squeeze without even doing a read with Zellweger. But for Woodall, who fondly remembers spending many Christmases watching the first “Bridget Jones” — released when he was 4 years old — a lot was riding on this meeting.
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It’s hard to imagine Woodall appearing sweaty and anxious now. He looks clean-cut and classic in a white T-shirt and jeans faded to the color of his eyes. Despite our interview taking place at the tail end of a long day, he’s ever the charmer, convincing himself he remembers me from the red carpet a few nights prior (“I knew I recognized you!”) and reaching to grab my hand after his misinterpretation of a question leaves us giggling. No doubt he’s good consolation for a rom-com series that just killed off the man Bridget spent 15 years pining after (and finally ended up with).
Yes, that’s right, Mark Darcy is dead. Based on “Bridget Jones” author Helen Fielding’s 2013 novel, “Mad About the Boy” picks up with the titular heroine four years after the unexpected demise of her husband, played by Firth in the first three films. Raising their two young children on her own, Bridget is reluctant to reenter the dating pool until she meets Roxster — the perfect mix of flirty and patient to help get her spark back.
Woodall first heard of the opportunity through his agent, who set him up to audition for renowned casting director Lucy Bevan. At first, it was requested that he prepare the role in a Scottish accent — a choice that didn’t stick. “They changed their minds, I guess, once I started doing it,” Woodall says with a chuckle. “They decided that they wanted me, but not Scottish me, which I’m fine with.”
Fielding, who co-wrote the film’s screenplay, knew Woodall could be a good fit after seeing him in “The White Lotus.” “Even though he was playing a terrible rogue, I thought, ‘That’s a very intelligent actor,’” she says. “And he likes women — you can see he likes women. He’s got the twinkle.”
But it’s still surprising that Woodall and Zellweger never screen-tested together. “They just put the faith in me and Renée,” he says. “Obviously, they didn’t have to worry about her … but I thought, ‘What if …?’ Because it’s one of those things that you can be lucky with and you can be unlucky, and luckily we …” There’s that twinkle. “I mean, she’s so easy to get along with, and she’s so generous and fun and cool. So it was easy for us to have what was needed for those two parts.”
Indeed, Woodall and Zellweger sizzle on-screen. Though their meet-cute isn’t exactly love at first sight — Roxster rescues Bridget and her kids when they get stuck in a tree — the slapstick moment infuses their relationship with a playful energy that reverberates throughout the film.
In a scene both sexy and funny, Roxster dives into a pool to save a dog at a party full of Bridget’s friends and emerges to kiss her passionately, white shirt soaked through. And the first time they have sex, it’s steamy — but also not without its silly mishaps (Bridget has become a “born-again virgin” since Darcy’s death). Despite Woodall and Zellweger being “fierce friends by that point,” the actor says production used an intimacy coordinator to help them get the tone right.
“Those intimate scenes are kind of awkward, you know?” Woodall says, leaning forward in the chair and resting his chin in his hands. “It doesn’t matter how sexy it may appear in the final cut — doing it is kind of awkward. So the best thing is for us to kind of just have a laugh with it, and it shines through.”
Of course, the crux of Roxster and Bridget’s relationship is their two-decade age difference. In the film, it’s a source of scandal and envy among Bridget’s enemies and friends, and some fans of the franchise were, safe to say, a little bit shocked at the double-whammy of Darcy’s death and Bridget’s new baby-faced beau when the trailer dropped in November. But women dating younger men has been at the forefront of Hollywood movies this past year, with films like “Babygirl” and “The Idea of You” exploring relationships that defy stereotypes. Going into “Mad About the Boy,” Woodall says he wanted their relationship to “feel real” and not just serve as a “trope-y mechanism for the plot.”
“They’ve existed and they do exist everywhere,” Woodall says of age-gap romances. “We’re just not used to seeing them on-screen.”
Zellweger agrees, saying at the London premiere, “I mean, I think it’s nothing new. But maybe the social taboos are melting away. It’s never a bad thing. There are certain things that we probably don’t need to have opinions about. And where people find love, why would that ever be a problem?”
Woodall concludes, “What the ‘Bridget Jones’ movies do so well is they’re so relatable and they strike so many true chords that people all over the world and across generations can relate to.”
With “One Day” and now “Bridget Jones” on his résumé, Woodall certainly seems like the new go-to romantic lead. Though he “wouldn’t say no” if another opportunity in the genre arose, he says, “I think I probably want to explore other avenues for a bit.”
At the top of his wish list is action. Though he leads Apple TV+’s new thriller series “Prime Target,” which has a few stunts, Woodall wants more. “I don’t think I have really done the action thing, to be honest,” he says.
Woodall is British, young and undeniably suave. Would he take on the role of James Bond? “Every British actor’s getting that !” he says, attempting to laugh it off. “That call hasn’t come yet.” But he concedes, “Yeah, I’d do Bond. I’d love to do something like that. It doesn’t need to be saving the world, but I want to beat up some bad guys, you know?”
While he waits for the call, Woodall will next be on the big screen with “Nuremberg,” James Vanderbilt’s historical drama about the post-World War II trials. He’s part of a stacked cast including Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon and Richard E. Grant. “It’s terrifyingly timely,” he says, as fascism continues to rear its head around the world. “I’ve seen it, and I think what Vanderbilt has done with it is really remarkable. The performances in it are so good, and he manages to make it very relatable to the present day.”
Starry projects aside, as Woodall’s own star rises, his privacy wanes. “It’s weird, man,” he says of fame, noting that after “One Day,” he started getting recognized on the street more and has been preparing for the deluge after “Bridget.”
His relationship with fellow “White Lotus” actor Meghann Fahy has also become a subject of internet interest, though he declines to talk about it. “There are only a few people who have properly figured it out,” he adds of adapting to life in the public eye. “Maybe you just never do.”
But if there’s one thing he’s learned from Bridget Jones, it’s to not take life too seriously. For Woodall, celebrity is “something that’s not silly, but silly. And if I can’t have a sense of humor about it, then I’ll go mad.”The Business of Entertainment
