‘Why shouldn’t they see where it goes?’ Leo Woodall on ‘age gap’ romance with Renée Zellweger in the new Bridget Jones movie
As Renée Zellweger returns to play Bridget Jones, her new on-screen love interest Leo Woodall addresses the controversy over their characters’ 27 year age difference.
Stellar
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Growing up in London, Leo Woodall saw his mum and sister swoon over Colin Firth as dashing Mark Darcy opposite a very relatable Renée Zellweger in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary.
“It’s one of the movies that you can kind of do every Christmas,” the actor, 28, tells Stellar. “I’ve always known it in my life. So it’s very cool to be able to be part of it.”
That’s because Woodall is set to join that conga line of suitors in Bridget’s fourth film outing Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which finds Bridget now widowed and back in the dating game, romancing the much younger Roxster McDuff (Woodall) and her children’s teacher, Scott Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
While Hollywood age-gap romances between older men and younger women aren’t new, recent films like Nicole Kidman’s Babygirl and Anne Hathaway’s The Idea Of You have literally flipped the script.
“When two people find the connection, why shouldn’t they see where it goes without judgment?” asks Woodall, who is nearly 27 years younger than Zellweger.
“Both dynamics should be equally normalised. It’s a good thing that we’re getting the reverse. Because it’s not uncommon – it’s just not portrayed much in movies.”
Acting is in Woodall’s genes – his father and mother met in acting school; his stepdad, Alexander Morton, is a fixture on British TV; and ancestor Maxine Elliott was an American silent film star – but he didn’t always see it as his destiny.
“I sort of rejected the idea until my late teens,” he says. “When I was younger, I wanted to be a stuntman or a PE [physical education] teacher. Luckily I found acting, because I wouldn’t have been very good at either.”
In 2022, Woodall made his mark playing mysterious criminal Jack in the second season of The White Lotus, especially in a jaw-dropping scene where he’s caught having sex with his “uncle”.
“I loved watching them be shocked by it,” Woodall admits of his family and friends’ reactions to the moment. “It was hilarious.”
On the set of Mad About The Boy, however, it was Woodall’s turn to be impressed by Zellweger, who spoke in a clipped British accent even when cameras weren’t rolling.
“I’ve worked with people that have done that before, and you kind of know that they’re doing it,” Woodall explains.
“Whereas with Renée – partly because she’s so good, but also because this character has been a part of her for such a long time – nothing about it seemed unnatural in any way.”
Working on a rom-com, he adds, was a welcome change of pace: “I knew it was going to be joyous because the roles I’d done before were, a lot of the time, darker and required me to really dig deep and tap into my blood, sweat and tears.”
Now he’ll tap into the world of red-carpet dressing as he promotes Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy at an Australian premiere in Sydney this weekend.
Margot Robbie wore pink to spruik Barbie and Zendaya rocked tennis-inspired fashion to launch Challengers. What’s Woodall got planned?
“I’m not sure what that would look like for a film like Bridget Jones,” he says, laughing. “Maybe we should all go in pyjamas?”
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas from February 13.
Read the full interview with Leo Woodall in Stellar tomorrow, inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).
For more from Stellar, click here. And find a new episode of Something To Talk About out tomorrow wherever you get your podcasts.
Originally published as ‘Why shouldn’t they see where it goes?’ Leo Woodall on ‘age gap’ romance with Renée Zellweger in the new Bridget Jones movie
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