Reintroducing Aimee Lou Wood: Her Career So Far

Whether you think she has been type cast once more as the ditsy northern blonde, take note of Aimee Lou Wood’s turn in The White Lotus season 3: Hollywood says she’s poised to become our new darling. Here’s why.

Here’s Why You Recognise Aimee Lou Wood

Aimee Lou Wood made her professional acting debut on the stage, but her breakout came on screen – our screens at home, to be precise. Starring as Aimee in all four seasons of Netflix’s inexplicably transatlantic high school drama Sex Education, this was the beginning of Wood’s rise to acclaim. She began the series as a popular if ditsy ‘Untouchable’ cool girl along with Ruby Matthews (Mimi Keene), Anwar Bakshi (Chaneil Kular) and Olivia Hanan (Simone Ashley), before secretly befriending Maeve (Emma Mackey). An emotional story about female friendship unfolds across subsequent series, with Aimee in particular journeying across an emotionally resonant arc involving sexual assault in the second season – with her performance in that season in particular snagging the BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance.

Aimee Lou Wood as Aimee Gibbs in Sex Education. (© Netflix)

This stint stretched from 2019 to 2023, and while Wood wasn’t as rapidly in demand (compared to the likes of Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa and Connor Swindells), it set the stage for a long-lasting career on our screens. In 2022, Wood had a leading role in Living opposite Bill Nighy, and in 2024 starred opposite Nicola Coughlan in Dark Ages comedy Seize Them!. As Sex Education drew to a close in 2023, Wood took a three-month turn on the West End, taking on the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret.

But Wood has been most present on TV: in 2024, she starred in Channel 4’s Alice & Jack with Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson, followed by BBC comedy Daddy Issues, which whisked her back to her Stockport homeland to star as an unexpectedly pregnant twenty-something partygirl who moves into a flatshare with her recently divorced father (David Morrissey).

Gemma (Aimee Lou Wood) and Malcolm (David Morrissey) in Daddy Issues. (© BBC/Fudge Park Productions/James Stack)

So 2025 spells Wood’s time to shine. As well as The White Lotus, Wood is about to star in Netflix’s Toxic Town, a miniseries tracing the story of three mothers involved in the Corby toxic waste case. Later this year, it’s back to comedy: Wood will lead Film Club on the BBC, the first project she is also a writer on.

Aimee Lou Wood Stars As Chelsea In The White Lotus

Wood’s highest profile role to date is arguably The White Lotus season 3, which she joins as Chelsea, a Manchester-born, fun-loving, globe-trotting hotel guest, former yoga teacher and much younger girlfriend of rugged, on-edge and stressed out American Rick (Walton Goggins). At first glance, Chelsea is indistinguishable from Sex Education’s Aimee: optimistic, a little naive, gregarious, friendly. However, Wood insists Chelsea and Aimee are ‘quite different humans’.

‘[Chelsea] is not like Aimee Gibbs, she’s like Aimee Wood,’ Wood tells Radio Times. ‘It’s so funny because obviously there’s a lot of me in Aimee because, as actors, you want to express yourself through a character.

‘So the similarity is probably that Aimee is like me and Chelsea is also like me,’ she added. ‘They’re just different parts of me – because I just like shedding. I like expressing parts of me through the characters that I’m given. I think they’ve got a similar optimism, but I actually think, at their core, they’re quite different humans.’

Walton Goggins & Aimee Lou Wood in The White Lotus season 3. (HBO)

In fact, Wood recently shared that The White Lotus’s creator Mike White had never seen Sex Education when he cast her as Chelsea in season 3. ‘I didn’t find it offensive or anything that he hadn’t seen it,’ Wood says. ‘I felt very released by that, actually, because it allowed me to be on that set as, like… I just felt like Chelsea.

‘She doesn’t know why she’s there,’ Wood teases on season 3. ‘She doesn’t know what The White Lotus resort is. And so, it was really helpful for me to just be like, “OK, I can’t know what The White Lotus, the show, is – I just have to be here and be present”.’

With seven more episodes to come and the first teasing an intriguing side plot for Chelsea’s partner Rick, it looks like there’s much more to Chelsea than meets the eye…

WATCH

The White Lotus airs on to Sky Atlantic and Now on Monday evenings. Read all about what to expect here.

Catch up with all episodes at nowtv.com