Ever since pictures of Rivals’ all-star cast started circulating online, fans of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles series have been getting excited about its TV adaptation.
The Disney+ show features one of the most starry ensembles viewers will have seen in a long time.
The likes of Aidan Turner, David Tennant and Danny Dyer have undergone some brilliant ’80s makeovers in order to bring to life all the scandal and sex of Dame Jilly’s best-selling book, which is set around life at a fictionalised TV channel.
For Turner, cast as the show’s lead news anchor, the “really cool” part was seeing the “sharp as a tack” author on set.
Turner said: “I think one of the first questions she asked was ‘who’s popping into whose trailer around here?'”. He admitted he “fed her a bunch of lies, but she seemed happy with it!”
While some literary snobs have in the past dismissed Cooper’s novels, there is a lot more to her writing than a bare bottom or two – her social commentary for starters.
Aidan Turner (with Nafessa Williams) said Jilly Cooper was ‘sharp as a tack’
As Turner explained: “Our show does feel like there’s a refreshing sense about it. It’s fun, it’s bold, it doesn’t feel safe, it feels different and, you know, it is this kind of perspective on the ’80s told through a 21st-century lens, I suppose.”
As to be expected, it doesn’t shy away from showing sex.
David Tennant, who plays the ethically questionable TV company chairman Lord Tony Baddingham, said for actors the industry has “gone on a bit of a journey” when it comes to approaching raunchier scenes.
“MeToo happened and corrected things a bit,” he said. “We’re now in a world where… everyone feels they’re in charge of that telling rather than having it done to them, so I think it feels quite empowering actually.”
Alex Hassell (L) and David Tennant
Emily Atack said she is still laughing about how “liberating” she found the experience of being asked on day one to strip off for a naked game of lawn tennis (not a euphemism).
She said: “I’m on a closed set, we have intimacy coordinators… and I’m very comfortable and happy… it’s other peoples’ behaviours that need to be looked at if they’re going to twist that into some grotesque negativity.”
Emily Atack filmed a naked tennis scene on her first day
For Alex Hassell, there is a weight of expectation on his shoulders. He was cast as the infamous Rupert Campbell-Black, who, those au fait with the books will know, is “the handsomest man in England”.
He said he “knew of the books being high up on my mum and dad’s shelf when I was young, next to The Joy Of Sex, but no, I didn’t quite know what I was letting myself in for”.
When he read the scripts, he said he “made the decision to be okay with [all of] it”.
A passionate scene from Rivals. Pic: Rivals/Disney
He added: “I wouldn’t have done anything that I didn’t want to do, but I thought ‘if I go into this feeling really nervous and awkward, then it’s going to be nervous and awkward’.
“A lot of the sex scenes are supposed to be fun, joyous, a reciprocal pleasure-giving experience. We tried to just have a laugh as much as possible.”
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One of the most remarked-upon transformations is that of Eastenders’ Danny Dyer who said he had a lot of fun playing “a teddy bear with a bite”.
Katherine Parkinson and Danny Dyer, who grew his own moustache for the show
He teased: “Growing a moustache, and it’s my own moustache, shows that I’m a very versatile actor.”
Rivals is released on Disney+ on 18 October.
