Every actor needs a speciality; Leo Woodall just happens to be really good at portraying total arseholes. In the irresistibly grubby second season of luxury hotel-based The White Lotus, he was smarmy Essex boy Jack, the “naughty nephew” of an apparently affluent British expat. But as his poor gullible mark Portia discovered, this cheeky chappy was, in fact, a manipulative conman. Next, he starred as Dexter Mayhew in Netflix’s note-perfect adaptation of David Nicholls’s romantic odyssey One Day. The handsome, privileged Dex was just about bearable until he became a TV presenter – at which point his natural talents for narcissism, cruelty and carelessness really started to shine through.
By all accounts, Woodall’s talent for playing unpleasant men bears no relation to his actual personality – but the 28-year-old is clearly leaning into this niche. Because in Prime Target, a new maths-centric thriller from Apple TV+ (from Wednesday 22 January), he’s at it again as Edward Brooks, Cambridge postgrad and all-round not-very-nice guy. Myopically fixated on his work (he’s attempting to find a pattern in prime numbers, and – yes – he becomes the target of shadowy forces for that very reason), we get the measure of him early doors as he sourly rejects the meal his infatuated friend has prepared for him, before irritably dodging an invitation to her birthday drinks.
