Meet the cast of Rivals: The Jilly Cooper adaptation with naked tennis and ’80s makeovers galore
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.
Pic:Rivals/Disney+/Havas
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.
Irish-language rap group Kneecap have announced a surprise London show, hours after one of their members was charged with a terror offence.
Liam O’Hanna, or Liam Og O Hannaidh, was charged with displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation, at a concert in London last November, the Metropolitan Police said on Wednesday.
Just hours later, Kneecap announced on their Instagram account that “we’re back”, adding that they would perform at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, London, on Thursday night.
The post also included a quote by former Sex Pistols vocalist John Lydon, who told ITV’s Good Morning Britain the rap trio “maybe (…) need a bloody good kneecapping” after footage of the band allegedly calling for the deaths of MPs emerged.
Kneecap performing in Belfast last year. Pic: PA
Kneecap apologised to the families of murdered MPs last month, but said footage of the incident at their concert had been “exploited and weaponised”, adding that they “never supported” Hamas or Hezbollah.
The rappers had gigs cancelled after the footage emerged and politicians pushed for Kneecap to be dropped from the Glastonbury Festival line-up, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch calling for Kneecap to be banned.
The group from Belfast in Northern Ireland is still set to headline Wide Awake Festival in south London on Friday.
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In response to O’Hanna being charged, Kneecap said that they “deny this ‘offence’ and will vehemently defend ourselves” and branded it “political policing” in a bid to “silence voices of compassion”.
The charge came after counter-terror police assessed a video said to be from a Kneecap concert.
In the footage, O’Hanna is allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, London, on 21 November last year.
Officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command were made aware of a video circulating online on 22 April and an investigation led to the Crown Prosecution Service authorising the charge, the force said.
O’Hanna – who performs under the stage name Mo Chara – is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 18 June.
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