[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Rivals.]

Summary

Set in the 1980s in the world of British TV, ‘Rivals’ follows a bitter rivalry between Tony Baddingham and Rupert Campbell-Black, leading to intense clashes.

The series explores romantic entanglements and corporate backstabbing in the high-stakes world of independent television.

Sex scenes in ‘Rivals’ are integral to the storytelling, portraying various relationships and adding depth to character dynamics.

Based on the novel by Dame Jilly Cooper, the drama series Rivals has been picked up for a second season of further romantic entanglements and bouts of excess, and if you haven’t yet checked out what it’s all about, you’ve got plenty of time to do so before Season 2 premieres. Set in the 1980s world of independent television in the UK, career-driven Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) just wants to succeed in a backstabbing profession that takes so much of his time and focus that he’s become neglectful of his family. When cutthroat station director Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) offers Declan his own interview show, he pairs him up with producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), a fierce women looking to prove she deserves the position that she’s stepped into.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Turner talked about being one of the first actors in the door for Rivals, how definitive the characters were, watching old BBC interviews to prepare, what he most enjoyed about playing Declan, that the TV studio set was built for real, the trifecta he was a part of with Tennant and Williams, and how the sex scenes were vital to the story.
Aidan Turner Was Happy To Be Thought of for the ‘Rivals’ Role of Declan O’Hara

Image via Hulu

Collider: When this came your way, how much did you know about what it would be? Did you get to read all the scripts?
AIDAN TURNER: You want to, but no is the answer. Some of the other actors had read Jilly Cooper’s book and were quite aware of who she is and tonally what kind of books she’s written and writes. I wasn’t so much. I knew the greater picture of Jilly Cooper and roughly what genre her books fall into, but I hadn’t read any before, so it was all new to me. I just met with Dominic Treadwell-Collins, our showrunner, Laura Wade, one of our writers, and Elliot Hegarty, our first director, for lunch before I had read anything, and we just talked about it. They said, “Can we send you this?” And then, I read it and we met again, and I told them that I loved it and wanted to be part of it. And then, I got more scripts. It went along those lines. They thought of me early, which was quite nice. I wasn’t an afterthought, which I wouldn’t mind either. I’d love to be in Jilly Cooper’s world anyway, but it was nice to be one of the first ones in the door.
It’s an interesting series because it starts off in a big way. You know what kind of show you’re going to be watching right away, but some of the characters take a bit of time to unfold.
TURNER: It’s interesting that you say that. I remember reading the first episode and just getting a sense of how well-rounded all the characters were. Sometimes you read the script and maybe some of the scripts aren’t so good and you’re going, “Who is this guy again?” There was no cause for that, at all. As soon as you hear the name or read the name, you’re reminded of this character that’s in your head now. I think that’s a real testament to Jilly’s writing. Something she does really well is write very definitive characters.

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There are dual layers to this guy. There’s the family man aspect, but then there’s also this TV guy who’s good at tearing people down. Which side of him did you start with? Did you start with the aspects of him you identified with most, and then work out from there? How did you approach this guy?
TURNER: That’s interesting. I don’t know if I’ve ever broken things up like that. It’s just all-encompassing, I suppose. What really attracted me to Declan is that he has a family and he’s a dad because in the last few years, I’ve become a dad. It’s very much a part of his life, even though he would say, shamefully and regretfully, he doesn’t spend enough time with his kids or at home or in the family, so to speak. You can always imagine what it’s like to be a parent, and you can be around friends who are parents, and you can be lucky enough to still have your parents around, but to be a parent yourself, it just feels different. It just does. There’s something grounding about Declan that I didn’t have to fight for. It’s just in me now. I didn’t have to reach so hard for it. It’s just who I am. And of course, he’s Irish, too. I based a lot of the character around my dad and the way my dad looked and sounded in the 80s. He’s still around, but I remember my dad in the 80s and, particularly, in the 90s. He had a big mustache like Declan. His physicality, the sound of his voice, and his accent were things I based the character on, too.
Simultaneously, I was watching old, dusty BBC interviews from the 70s and 80s, like William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. You can get all these different shows so easily on YouTube and different sources. So, I just got a real sense of what these long-form interviews were like. People really took their time. They weren’t interrupted so much. You really had to have your ducks in a row, and you were given this time to speak. Declan does that, but he’s also kind of revolutionary. He’s something of a visionary of his time, where he knows how to play somebody, pin them down, and absolutely interrupt and get to the guts of what he wants to get to, which is maybe something you’d see more now. That all happened at the same time.
When you’re drawing from your dad to play a character, do you tell him?
TURNER: I still haven’t told him. I presume he’ll figure it out. I think I don’t wanna ever tell them and just see whether he’ll say something to me.
Aidan Turner’s ‘Rivals’ Character Isn’t Shy About Saying What’s on His Mind

There are things about all these characters that you could like, and there are things not to like about them all. What do you most enjoy about Declan? What did you most enjoy about playing him and getting to explore in his shoes that you wouldn’t at any other time?
TURNER: Good question. I think he’s quite a serious guy. Not to say he’s not fun, or he doesn’t get funny, or he can’t be funny and fun, but he wants to be taken seriously in his line of work. He’s a journalist, and he would consider himself a serious journalist. If he wasn’t presenting a “chat” show, and he hates that term, it seems as if he’d like to be on the front line. I think he’d like to see himself as a war correspondent, if he didn’t have kids and a family. I think he wants to be out there. He’s always chasing that feeling of recognition in his own community. He wants to be taken seriously. It’s an interesting character for me because it’s not really somebody that I am, but I’ve met people like that. I meet people who are that way, and it’s important for them to have that attribute in their character. He says what’s on his mind, and he says it loudly.
He also shoots from the hip. He’ll say something and he’ll demand something, but he also spots people in the room who have the better idea. He’s not arrogant, in that way. He doesn’t want to always sing from his own hymn sheet. If somebody else has the better gig or the better line or the better interview or the better idea, he’ll go with them. I quite like that about him, too. There are lots of aspects of his character that I find interesting. What I got a real sense of, from reading the first few scripts, is that he has his own thing. Lots of the characters have their own thing – in fact, they almost all do – but his seems quite different. When he’s in the TV studio, those weeks that I’d shoot there, I really didn’t see any of the other actors. It’s a very different thing. He has his office. There are different worlds. I can nip into the garden parties, but because he’s not such a big fan of that, I’m not always involved. It’s nice to dip my toe into that, but then also take him out into the more adult world of interviews.
What was it like to do those interview scenes, with the back and forth between you on stage, but then also whatever was going on behind the scenes, and the audience?
TURNER: It was strange. It’s as tricky and complicated as you would imagine. There was an earpiece, and the earpiece was working, and I was hearing things. It was also a real build. In our studio, where Cameron is and there are people up in the box, they’re really there. I can see them and they can see me. The set is amazing, actually. It’s all built. It’s quite brilliant. There was a bit of getting used to it, of just who to listen to and where to look. And we used the real cameras – the old BBC cameras from the 70s and 80s. We had engineers that worked in the 70s, 80s, and 80s with these cameras that they were shooting us with. It felt very real.
You’d be surprised how much you know already from just watching so many interviews. We’ve all done it. When it’s written well, and it was, it just trips off your tongue. The intonation and the flow is there, and you know when you don’t have it because it just doesn’t sound right in your ear. You’re guided by this knowledge that you’ve accumulated from spending thousands of hours watching television over the last two decades. It’s just lodged in there somewhere. And then, there’s an amalgamation of all these different presenters that you can put together, and you can pick and choose the little bits that you like. I stole from some more contemporary presenters and from some older presenters that weren’t around anymore. It was fun.
I had no idea that it was so cutthroat. In this, it feels like the success of a show is life or death.
TURNER: One hundred percent, but I totally believe it. It’s not this faux energy that we’re trying to drum up for our drama series. This is independent television in 1986, and I believe it was like this. And it was cutthroat. If you didn’t do the job well the next week, you might not be on television. That’s the way TV worked. Everyone was your best friend, until they’re not.

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What was it like to develop that little trio that you had with David Tennant and Nafessa Williams? What was it like to figure out that dynamic?
TURNER: It felt quite real. A set in the 50s in Hollywood was like a Shakespearian play, where you’d see every level, from the runners to the directors to the producers, and you’d see these different power plays happening. You see that in our show, and it is life or death for these people. They either wanna be on television or behind it, and they wanna exist in this world. If you wanna be there and around it, you have to work really hard and be popular, so everyone’s out to get everyone else. Every character is either trying to improve the class, deny their class, or escape their class. Everyone’s transactionally going, “What can I get from somebody else? And if I play this, what do I need to receive on this end?” It’s interesting. It’s a constant. How did we come up with that little trifecta? You just play those things out. You have this sense and this feeling. We’re all such definitive characters that it just flows.
It seemed very fun, but also very fast. It felt like you had to just jump in, and it would either work or it wouldn’t.
TURNER: It felt like that to shoot it, too. You make a show, and it doesn’t always look like the show you were in, for lots of different reasons. Our show is pretty straightforward. What was on camera was happening on set, too. That energy was always there. That fun was there. That speed that we had to get things done was how it was on set. Not that we were under pressure, but once it took off on the first day, it was this train that didn’t stop. It was relentless.
The Sex Scenes in ‘Rivals’ Really Help Define the Character Relationships

Image via Hulu

This series is also a bit naughty, which makes it even more fun. When the sex scenes are as big a part of the story and the characters as they are, it feels like something that you couldn’t take out of the storytelling. Was it important to you that it was so vital to the storytelling and that it never felt disconnected?
TURNER: It didn’t feel disconnected, and it didn’t feel disconnected in the script either. I remember reading it and thinking, “Yeah, there is a lot of this, but it feels justified.” There are so many different types of sex with so many different types of characters. It’s all so different. Maud and Declan’s relationship is a loving relationship, but she’s become despondent because he never has time, so they have an interesting sexual energy. And compared to someone like Tony Baddingham and his wife, it’s different. There are so many different types of relationships, in that way. It read right to me. It tracked when I read it. Some things don’t. You might pick up a film script and go, “Why is this happening again? Why do they specifically want this shot that they’re mentioning?” There was nothing about the scripts that felt gratuitous or superfluous or was something that we didn’t need. It felt right, and I think we were right on that. I watch the show now and, yeah, there’s a lot of sex in it, but it’s real good.

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The scene that cuts to all the different characters, back and forth, as they’re having sex was quite an interesting way to learn about who they all are.
TURNER: Yeah. It’s transactional with so many of the characters. It’s not that it’s not desired or wanted, but they wanna do something with it. They’re doing it to get something or to swap it for something. There’s always a dynamic happening. It’s interesting to see it play out. It’s a bit like a Chekhov play. You’re constantly going, “What’s that character doing? What’s that new relationship with this guy? Have you noticed this look? Are they doing something there?” It’s the world that’s created around that sexual energy that I think is really interesting.

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Rivals

Release Date

October 18, 2024

Cast

David Tennant
, Aidan Turner
, Danny Dyer
, Bryony Hannah
, Milo Callaghan
, Wendy Albiston
, Georgia Mack
, Louis Landau
, Alex Hassell
, Bella Maclean
, Katherine Parkinson

Main Genre

Drama

Seasons

1

Streaming Service(s)

Hulu

Rivals is available to stream on Hulu. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Hulu