For British author David Nicholls, the key to a good romance story is avoiding clichés. “The first kiss, the first night together, the wedding day. There are all these milestones that are pretty well known and pretty obvious,” he said recently.
Instead, his 2009 novel One Day follows its two protagonists, Emma and Dexter, on the same day every year for two decades, as they weave in and out of each other’s lives as friends, partners, and whatnot. in between. What happened in the previous 364 days is revealed slowly and indirectly, with many key moments left to the reader’s imagination.
In 2011, the novel – which has been translated into 40 languages and sold millions of copies – was adapted into a film starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, and the story has now found new life as a limited series, created by Scottish screenwriter Nicole . Taylor and available on Netflix.
While both adaptations closely follow the novel’s structure and plot, the series devotes the majority of its 14 half-hour episodes to a different year in the couple’s lives. The film’s shorter running time meant significant cuts, so that it ended up being a “little synopsis of the novel”, according to Nicholls. (In a Times review, critic AO Scott wrote that the film “turns an episodic story into an anthology of emotion and association.”)
The extended run of the show allows for more rounded characters for Emma (played by Ambika Mod, previously Shruti on “This Is Going to Hurt”) and Dexter (Leo Woodall, who was Jack in season 2 of “The White Lotus”). We meet them in 1988, on their last night at college, where Emma has put her head down and worked hard on a double major and Dexter he was a popular party guy who achieved below-average grades in anthropology.
As in the film, Dexter is rich, handsome and can be cocky, but Taylor said she didn’t want her script to make him an “archetypal posh boy” but to emphasize his vulnerability. We see Dexter on the verge of tears at a train station after a heated conversation with his father and using a pay phone to leave a sob on Emma’s voicemail, begging her to pick up the phone.
“The kind of vulnerabilities that Dexter has, Leo played beautifully,” Taylor said, adding that the actor “brought a different kind of Dexter to the show.”
In an interview, Woodall said that playing Dexter allowed him to experience “the deep depths and the real lows of someone else’s life.” In his character’s early years, he “just wants to have fun,” Woodall said, but “the booze, the drugs, and his coping mechanism of grief and escape” get to him.
“There’s a lot of sympathy for him,” Woodall added. “It makes it difficult, but when you look at it in the long view, it’s trying very hard to stay alive.”
For many “One Day” fans, Emma is the most relatable character: an underdog fighting for a chance to get ahead. This was also true of Taylor, who was 29 when the novel came out, living in London and desperate to become a writer. “I felt like I was trying to do something for myself in a world full of Dexters,” he said. As a result, he said, “there’s more Emma in the show than in the movie or maybe even the book.”
In the early episodes of the show, Emma is guarded and lacks confidence, which Mod said felt “realistic” for a woman of color in her character’s situation. “A lot of people, when they read the book, wouldn’t imagine a brown Emma, but I think if anything, it reinforces and highlights the things that make her more relatable,” Mod said. “The world pushes us to feel small and stay in our own lane and Emma’s lack of confidence and insecurity is definitely a result of that.”
As the episodes and years go by, both Emma and Dexter grow up: Dexter becomes more serious and Emma feels more confident about herself. Taylor said she hoped fans of the book would watch the show — which feels like a more upbeat “Normal People” — and “fall in love with Ambika and Leo and feel like, ‘yeah, there’s Emma and Dexter. told me.
Nichols’ story has such longevity, Taylor said, because everyone has a relationship similar to Emma and Dexter’s, even if it’s not romantic. “We all have that one person who always brings you back to the best version of yourself,” she said.