Three years to make One Day

Scottish screenwriter Nicole Taylor has revealed that it took her three years to make the hit Netflix series One Day.

Taylor, originally from Glasgow, was lead writer on the new series, based on David Nicholls’ 2009 bestselling novel of the same name.

The Bafta-winner said she was approached to work on the romantic drama just after the birth of her daughter four years ago, and has worked on nothing else for the last three years.

The 14 part series, which has received rave reviews, features English actors Leo Woodall, who starred in The White Lotus, and Ambika Mod, of BBC series This is Going to Hurt, as Dexter and Emma who meet for the first time on their last day at Edinburgh University.

The story, shot partly on location in Edinburgh, follows their lives and relationship over 20 years with episodes finding them on the same date, July 15, each year.

Taylor, who was a fan of Nicholls’ book and also executive produced the Netflix series, told the Restless Natives podcast: “It’s about this guy and girl who meet on the last night of Edinburgh University in 1988.

“They’ve got nothing in common — she’s a working class northerner, he’s an English posho — but there’s just something between them.

“Every subsequent episode of the series is the same date, the fifteenth of July one year hence, one year hence, one year hence.

“It’s a kind of love story and the story of a kind of cosmic friendship over 20 years. But gosh it was hard work. I wrote nine or ten (episodes). It was a lot of work. They are different lengths depending on what story’s going on that year.

“I was EPing (executive producing) it and I kind of overwrote some of the other episodes so basically I’ve done nothing but this for the last three years.

“My wee girl was one when I started this and now she’s four and about to go to school.”

Taylor has won widespread acclaim in recent years. She won a BAFTA for her three-part BBC series Three Girls about the Rochdale child sex abuse ring.

She also wrote the BBC drama series The Nest, starring Martin Compston and the award winning movie Wild Rose, which starred Jessie Buckley as a Scottish country singer.

She added: “Some writers are really prolific and do loads of things at the same time. I can only do one thing at a time and it takes me many many drafts… For me I have to be obsessed with something.”