One Day actress Ambika Mod has revealed there were times she was close to quitting (Picture: Netflix)
One Day star Ambika Mod has revealed there were times she felt as though she was a ‘f**king s**t actor’ and wanted to quit on the spot after filming some scenes.
The actress, 28, stars opposite Leo Woodall in the Netflix series, based on the 2009 novel of the same name.
Leo, 27, and This Is Going To Hurt actress Ambika play Dexter and Emma, respectively, whose relationship is depicted across a 20-year period, which viewers only get to see on one day of the year, July 15.
We see the characters’ heartbreaks and struggles on screen, as well as moments that have left us sobbing.
But at points, they were struggling in real life too, with Ambika revealing she felt that she should quit, but thankfully had Leo’s support when she would share how she was feeling.
Speaking on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast, the award-winning actress explained that ‘cheeky and charming’ Leo helped her through
She said: ‘I met Leo at the chemistry reads and he was the second Dexter I read with. He is so cheeky and charming.
Ambika stars opposite Leo Woodall in the heartbreaking Netflix drama (Picture: Netflix/AP)
‘He was so open and warm just immediately and it felt really easy, the scenes felt really playful and I think that’s really rare.
‘That was really half the battle because I think if that had been cast wrong, it would have been so much harder.
‘You just can’t fake that stuff and I’m really grateful to have had an actor like Leo.
‘We were both going through a very, very similar thing. This was so much bigger than anything either of us had ever done before and I think we both felt really similarly about the undertaking.’
She went on to say that at the beginning, filming felt ‘overwhelming’ and ‘a massive responsibility’, not just because of their roles but because they wanted to do justice to the ‘beloved’ characters from the book.
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‘We were both really open when we were struggling,’ Ambika shared (Picture: Netflix)
‘We were both really open when we were struggling, when we didn’t feel like things were right,’ she said.
‘I remember just like, maybe I was more vocal about it than him, but I would come out of every scene just being like, “oh, I’m a f**king sh*t actor, I should f**king quit right now, I hate myself.”
‘And he was always very supportive to me in that, and I hope vice versa. It was good to have someone like that because as an actor you might not always have that.’
Ambika elsewhere spoke about how she’s struggled to feel comfortable in her own school, recalling how ‘tough’ it was at school and how she felt as though she had to be the ‘funniest, smartest, hardest person, hardest working person in the room because my looks aren’t going to get me anywhere’.
The actress admitted she was close to quitting mid-filming (Picture: Netflix)
‘It’s been a real, real journey, but I went through a lot of evolution in my early 20s and I became more confident in who I am, especially doing comedy. I found who I was,’ she added, saying she now has ‘self-belief’ but it is still ‘a daily process’.
After struggling with depression, which Ambika related to and confronted in her role as Shruti in This Is Going To Hurt, the actress and comedian revealed one moment during filming One Day where she realised how she had changed her life around after going through anhedonia, which she described as ‘a numbing to joy’.
‘There was a really funny, amazing moment where it was the beginning of shooting One Day. We were sat on the top of Arthur’s Seat (in Edinburgh) at the end of July. It was so sunny, the weather was gorgeous,’ she said.
‘On the last day of every [Edinburgh Fringe Festival] we would walk up Arthur’s Seat. The last fringe I’d done was in 2019. I was feeling extremely depressed. I was feeling this numbness and this futility about what it is I was doing.
Ambika previously played Shruti in This Is Going To Hurt, a character whose mental health struggles she somewhat related to (Picture: BBC/Sister)
Emma and Dexter’s love story has stolen our hearts (Picture: Netflix/AP)
‘And cut to three years later, I was at the top of Arthur’s Seat again. I was the lead of this Netflix show of one of my most beloved books and it felt almost like a universal, full circle moment.
‘I just felt so lucky and blessed and almost like it was meant to be because it was almost like three years exactly that I’d last been at Arthur’s Seat and just to be there under a completely different context was really, really special.’
This comes after Ambika revealed she initially turned down the audition to play Emma, before waking up one night to realise she’d made a ‘terrible mistake’.
She explained on The Graham Norton Show: ‘The next day, I called my agent and was like, “Is it too late? Have I missed the boat?” And she was like, “No, I was just talking to the casting director who says it’s your last chance because they’re doing recalls next week.”
‘So, I learned a Yorkshire accent in two days and sent a tape off! And the rest is history.’
One Day is available to watch on Netflix.
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