“One Day” author shares what's different about the upcoming Netflix series

Samantha Highfill
·3 min read
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David Nicholls says "there is a lot more sex" in the new adaptation.

<p>Netflix</p> Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall in

Netflix

Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall in 'One Day'

15 years after David Nicholls first wrote One Day, the story will get a new life as a limited series.

As readers know, that story follows best friends Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, catching up with them on the same day each year as they grow up (and consistently find new ways to pretend they're not madly in love with each other). Nicholls' book is no stranger to adaptations: Nicholls himself wrote the screenplay for a 2011 film version, which starred Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess.

But this time, it's Nicole Taylor (Wild Rose) who's leading the charge on the adaptation. "I knew quite early on I didn't want to write it myself," Nicholls says. "I spent so much time with it. It felt like it needed a fresh pair of eyes, but it's been bliss. Of course we've cut things. We've had to condense things. So there's still those editorial decisions to be made, but I've been so happy with the process and it's been an incredibly enjoyable experience."

Nicholls says the idea for the series starting coming up five of six years ago. "Between making the movie and making this version, it's almost as if this new medium was invented. Streaming TV is much more analogous to the experience reading a novel than a movie."

But who would play Emma and Dexter and would they have the necessary chemistry? The answer: Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall ... and yes. "We saw hundreds of people," Nicholls recalls. "We saw a huge number of really wonderful actors. It wasn't as if we were kind of looking and not finding anyone. We found some real talent. But I'd seen Ambika in This Is Going to Hurt, which I thought she was extraordinary in, and she had a certain Emma quality, a kind of watchfulness and wisdom that I thought was very Emma. Leo, I'd never seen in anything at all. And yet when we started pairing up the actors to see how they worked together, it was just magical. They were just so good together, so playful and funny, and with such a rapport. And so we all felt at that moment, this is Em and Dex."

Woodall and Mod will guide viewers through many years of Dexter and Emma's lives, both together and apart. "The premise of the novel was it should be like looking through a photograph album in the way that a photograph snatches a moment in time, that these days are little vignettes of how you were at that time. So that was very much the intention with the show, that they would age."

But like with any adaptation, there will be changes to the story. For one thing, "There is a lot more sex in this than there is in the novel," Nicholls says. "I tend to fade to black and Nicole doesn't fade to black." After all, as Nicholls reminds us, "Adaptation means change."

And yet not everything changes: No matter how many times they tell this story, Nicholls still wants it to be great. "We're very nervous," he says with a laugh, "but also we are very proud of it."

One Day premieres Thursday, Feb. 8, on Netflix.

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