The Stunning Transformation Of One Day Star Ambika Mod
Chances are, if you've watched Netflix's "One Day," the latest adaptation of David Nicholl's 2009 book of the same name, you are now obsessed with Ambika Mod. In the series, Mod plays Emma Morley, a smart girl from Yorkshire who falls into a slow burn romance with Dexter (played by "The White Lotus" Season 2 actor Leo Woodall). It's one of Mod's first big roles, coming shortly after her appearance opposite Ben Whishaw in the 2022 hit "This Is Going To Hurt."
Mod's rise has been a swift one; in just a few years, she's gone from appearing in gigs on the comedy circuit to being a full-fledged TV star who was named one of the BAFTA Breakthrough performers of 2022 . Want to learn a little more about how she went from being a shy girl from Hertfordshire to one of Netflix's leading ladies? Here is the stunning transformation of "One Day" actor Ambika Mod.
Ambika Mod grew up in Hertfordshire with a love of the performing arts
Ambika Mod was born in 1995 to parents who had immigrated to England from India. Her mother, an accountant, moved when she was a child, while her father had arrived as a young adult. "Does that make me first or second generation?" Mod asked The Times in 2022. "I get confused." Mod and her younger sister grew up in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
As a child, Mod quickly found herself drawn to performing after watching Bollywood movies and lots of TV comedies. "Friends" was her first big influence. "I remember watching 'Friends' since I was so, so young and even though I had no idea what was going on, I remember finding it so funny anyway," she recalled to Voice. "And that ambition to be that funny and skilled as a performer has always stuck with me." However, her parents encouraged her to focus on more academic pursuits. "My parents made very clear that, no, that's not going to happen," she said to The Times. "They said, 'You can do it as an extracurricular activity, you can do it at school to get Ucas points, but not as a career.'"
As a teen, Ambika Mod didn't feel represented in media
As a teen, Ambika Mod took inspiration from American comedians like Steve Carell, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler. However, as she grew older and continued to consider a potential future as a performer, she recognized a lack of South Asian role models for her to look up to in the industry. Although she was a big fan of stars like Mindy Kaling, she struggled with the overall dearth of representation. "I've always had a difficult relationship with my physical appearance and I think a lot of that is being told, specifically or implicitly, that brown women aren't the standard of beauty," she said to The Guardian. "That's quite insidious, [and] gets fed to you by way of not seeing yourself on screen — that is very specific to young women of color."
Eventually, after years of seeing so few Asian role models on screen, Mod even began to doubt her own potential. "I know that growing up I didn't see myself on screen and that was a massive part of me not seeing myself in certain rooms or not thinking I deserve certain things," she confessed to Glamour.
Ambika Mod soon fell into comedy
Even though Ambika Mod grew up dreaming of acting, she soon found herself doing comedy sketches and stand-up. After failing to land any acting parts in amateur productions while she was attending St Mary's College, Durham University, she joined the Durham Revue, a college comedy troupe that also toured to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. "I found out about the Durham Revue before coming to university and it was something I was very keen to be a part of but I never thought in a million years that I would actually get in," she said to Her Campus. "I had never written anything before auditioning for the Revue so that's really where I got my start."
During her time in the Durham Revue, Mod wrote and performed in sketches — some of her favorites included a parody about a romcom that revolved around Flying Ant Day and a sketch about multicultural names that appear in exam questions. Clearly, she had an amazing time at Durham — and learned a lot about comedy while she was there. As she said to The Guardian, "I found comedy and it swept me away... There's no better feeling than standing on stage and making people laugh."
Ambika Mod struggled to find acting work after moving to London
After receiving an English literature degree from St Mary's College, Durham University, Ambika Mod moved to London to pursue acting. At first, making it as an actor wasn't exactly easy. In fact, it was a while before she even landed an agent. "Nobody was interested — it was really disheartening," she said to The Times. Instead of quickly landing a break out role, Mod found herself bouncing around various other jobs. She worked at the department store John Lewis, and then worked as a personal assistant at Condé Nast. All the while, she continued writing sketch comedy and looking for opportunities to perform.
After a while, she began to doubt herself and wonder if she had made the right decision. She even recalled meeting up with friends and saying, "We could have been investment bankers; we could have been raking it in." However, as she told The Guardian, she felt "like a massive fail." Luckily, Mod didn't give up — she kept on trying to follow her dreams. And soon enough, things began to turn around.
Ambika Mod did a show at the Edinburgh Fringe but soon felt lost
Things began to pick up for Ambika Mod after she and her friend, Andrew Shires, formed the duo Megan from HR and took a comedy show called "Children of the QuornTM" to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. "We decided to work together not only because we're best friends but because we complement each other so well which is one of the reasons our partnership is unique," Mod said to Get Your Coats On. "It did really well, but I look back at that time and I almost don't recognise that person," Mod later recalled to The Times, adding that the festival was a real "lesson in resilience."
The show led to Mod signing with an agent, but things remained tough. In fact, as she later told Graham Norton, she felt "lost" at the time (via HuffPost). To make matters worse, the pandemic hit just one year later, sending Mod into what she described to Bustle as an "existential crisis."
Ambika Mod started therapy to treat her anxiety and depression
It was around this time that Ambika Mod decided to start seeing a therapist. As she told The Times in 2022, the actor not only struggles with depression and anxiety, but was dealing with dissociating and repressing her emotions — the good and bad alike.
"I don't remember a lot of 2019 because I was cut off emotionally from everything," she confessed to the outlet, adding, "when you cut yourself off from the pain and the hurt and the loneliness, you also cut yourself off from every positive feeling that you could experience. That sort of anhedonia — the lack of pleasure, no matter what you do — is something I experienced."
Later, when Mod played Shruti in "This Is Going To Hurt," her experiences with anxiety and depression became something she could draw from in her performance. "I felt, 'I can relate to that,'" she said.
If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
Ambika Mod had her breakout role in This Is Going To Hurt
Ambika Mod finally landed her breakout role in 2022 when she was cast as Shruti opposite Ben Whishaw in "This Is Going To Hurt," a show about the British health service during the pandemic. As Mod told Bustle, the role came out of the blue. "I had this month of calm where I stopped worrying about it and out of nowhere this tape came to me," she recalled. "This sounds really wanky, but I feel like the universe brought it to me."
Not only was Mod thrilled to land such a major role, she was also over the moon to get to play a South Asian woman who wasn't merely a stereotype. "It's just so rare to see a well-written, young South Asian woman who has a really interesting arc," she said. "She doesn't exist for other characters, or the plot, and it's sad to say but it's true: you don't see a lot of parts like that."
Of course, she was nervous at first. As she put it to Grazia, "I was really s***ting myself — it's a big TV drama." But although it was Mod's first big gig, she received rave reviews for her performance. NPR noted that she was "excellent," while Empire called it a "star-making role." Mod's performance also earned her Best Supporting Actor at the 2023 Royal Television Society Programme Awards.
Ambika Mod had to get used to fame
Before "This Is Going to Hurt," Ambika Mod was a struggling performer with dreams of making it in one of the most competitive and ruthless industries. After "This Is Going to Hurt," Mob was a star... which meant she had to get used to people recognizing her in public pretty quickly. What's more, the fan messages began to pour in. "The immediate feedback has been huge," Mod told The Times. "I've had a lot of messages from people in the NHS, regardless of gender, race, age." She also received lots of messages from Indian women with acne scarring — "which is quite common for south Asian women," said Mod — who were happy to see someone who looked like them on screen.
Mod's nothing but grateful for all of the fan support she's received. "Life has been a bit insane and surreal recently but people have been nothing but kind and excited and supportive," she said to Bustle. "It's really life-affirming to be reminded that most people genuinely want the best for you, even if you don't feel you deserve it all the time."
Ambika Mod appeared in I Hate Suzie
Shortly after landing her career defining role in "This Is Going To Hurt," she landed another major role in Sky's "I Hate Suzie," a show starring Billie Piper as a former child star. Mod appeared in two episodes as Una, a film crew member in the fictional show within a show. "I play Una who is a floor runner on this celebrity reality dance competition," Mod said in a Sky featurette. "I've been asking Liv a lot about the role." Luckily, Mod had real-life runners to learn from on set. The real runner, Liv, then showed Mod how she made coffee for the cast members on set. Clearly, Mod had some great real-life inspiration to pull from when creating her character.
This part also offered Mod a chance to flex her comedy chops. After taking on the more dark content of "This Is Going To Hurt," the actor must have felt a little more at home in this fast-paced, humorous role.
Ambika Mod almost missed out on One Day because of imposter syndrome
Ambika Mod's next big break came in the 2024 Netflix series "One Day." The smash hit based on David Nicholl's beloved novel follows Emma and Dexter throughout their relationship, catching up with them on one specific day of the year each year. While the role proved to be a home run for Mod, she almost passed on it. Thanks to a bad case of imposter syndrome, she did not even want to audition for the project.
"I always have imposter syndrome, always!" she said to Glamour. "Even when I'm not even doing anything remarkable. I feel like I shouldn't be here, and everyone's looking at me and thinking I'm an imposter." She went on to explain that she couldn't imagine taking on the role — she knew the story well having been a fan of the book as a child. "I just thought it'd be a massive waste of everyone's time if I even entertained it," she said. Luckily, the casting director eventually convinced her to go for it and soon enough, she had won the role.
Ambika Mod worked very hard on getting her One Day accent right
As fans of "One Day" may know, Emma Morley, the main character, is from Yorkshire, a county in the north of England — and the accent isn't exactly an easy one to get right. In 2011, Anne Hathaway played the role in the film version of the novel, and many fans weren't too impressed by her attempt at the regional dialect. In fact, at the time, she was lambasted by fans and critics alike for her inconsistent accent work in the film.
Naturally, Ambika Mod, who grew up in the southern part of England, was anxious to get the accent right. And apparently, it required a fair amount of work. "If you see my audition tapes, I can't do the Yorkshire accent," she told HuffPost UK. "I couldn't do it." However, that all changed after she started working with Natalie Grady, an accent coach. By the sounds of things, the process was very, very intensive.
"We were militant — we met, like, three times a week, hour-and-a-half sessions, we went through every single sound," she said. "I learned a really, really strong, authentic Leeds accent, and then we pared it down and found an accent that felt really truthful to Emma and where she was in episode one, and then we tapered it from then on. But yeah, it took a village, for sure. I definitely didn't just do it on my own. But I'm very glad that people think it's OK."
Starring in One Day was a dream come true for Ambika Mod
Accent concerns and imposter syndrome aside, playing Emma in "One Day" was a total dream come true for Ambika Mod. In fact, even after filming, she couldn't quite believe it was real. "All of this is still mad to me," she gushed to the BBC about her role in the show.
Mod also noted to the outlet that landing a part that wasn't written as an Indian character is especially meaningful to her. "I think it just opens up a whole other dimension to her character and her identity that is prevalent in the book and I think it becomes even more enhanced by my casting in the series," she said, adding, "I hope it will open people's minds a little bit. I'm aware how significant it will be to a lot of people, especially young women of colour, young South Asian women in particular."
Mod also realized that "One Day" would catapult her to new levels of fame. In fact, she even jokingly called the premiere date her "death day." "Everything after that is just black." she said to Glamour. "I literally have no preconceptions or expectations." Well, now that the show is out, it's clear that she had nothing to worry about — not only do fans love her performance, critics have called her a "revelation," a "major talent," and "excellent."
Ambika Mod is set to star in Playdate
Ambika Mod has already risen quickly in the world of acting — and it seems her rise is only just beginning. With "One Day" freshly out on Netflix, she's already looking towards her next project. In 2023, she was cast in Disney+'s "Playdate," a new series that also stars Denise Gough, Holliday Grainger, and Jim Sturgess. Based on Alex Dahl's novel, the show will be a thriller about a mother whose daughter is kidnapped during a sleepover. While we don't know who Mod will be playing yet, we do know that she's sure to be a stand-out.
And that's not all Mod has up her sleeve. In the years to come, we might see her get behind the camera, too. "Whilst my focus is on acting in the next few years, I definitely want to direct," she told National World in 2022. "I definitely want to produce. I definitely want to develop a show from the early stages... It's still very new, very fresh, so I'm going to learn as much as I can in the next few years and then hopefully look at all that stuff." Well, we cannot wait to see what comes next.