Category Archives: rivals

Rivals Star Recalls ‘Modesty Equipment’ Malfunction While Shooting Racy Shower Scene

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The current season of Rivals very much started as it meant to go on when it returned to our screens earlier this month, kicking things off with a raunchy shower scene.

In the sequence in question, Victoria Smurfit’s Maud O’Hara was seen sharing a steamy shower with her husband Declan, played by Aidan Turner, in what was later reduced to a comedy of errors resulting in a scene-stealing EastEnders cameo.

Rivals’ robust approach to intimacy co-ordination is already well-documented, with Victoria telling fans at the Hay Festival on Sunday that both she and Aidan were required to wear “modesty equipment” for the shoot.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

“It was long, pink and a fucking plaster,” the actor said, as reported by The Times. “You take the plaster, you jam it on and hope it stays there.”

She continued: “I have to be honest with you – under a storming shower, it doesn’t stay there for long. You give up. You just realise that glue is not what it was in the 80s.”

Victoria Smurfit and Aidan Turner in Rivals' second season
Victoria Smurfit and Aidan Turner in Rivals’ second season

Victoria previously praised the show’s “fantastic” intimacy coordinators, who help facilitate its many, many sex scenes safely for actors and crew members, while promoting season one.

“Pretty much all of the characters have to de-robe at some stage, whether it’s for comedy, love or power, so we had two intimacy coordinators,” she told The Gloss.

“They were fantastic because, what I’d never realised before, was how much they bring to the camera angles and the story-telling. It’s not just to protect the actors; it’s much deeper.”

Similarly, she told Evoke: “The intimacy coordinators were amazing, all 27,000 of them because they were able to [explain], ‘This is what sells the story of the sex’, because each of the sex scenes for everybody is telling a story about the characters and how they function.”

As a result, the hardest part of shooting each of these scenes, she claimed, was worrying “how cold are we going to be in this outfit?”.

Rivals continues on Friday 29 May and 5 June, before taking a mid-season break and returning later in 2026.

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Rivals Star Luca Pasqualino Claims He’s Still ‘Haunted’ By His Ted Lasso Audition

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Rivals actor Luca Pasqualino has revealed he came close to landing a major role in a very different British show that has also gone on to become a huge hit internationally.

During a recent interview with HuffPost UK to promote the new episodes of the Jilly Cooper bonkbuster, Luca was asked if there was an audition he missed out on earlier on in his career that still “haunts” him today, to which he admitted that there was “definitely” one that came immediately to mind for him.

“One that I got really, really close to that sort of sticks out was Ted Lasso,” he explained, before sharing that he’d tried out to play striker Jamie Tartt in the Apple TV+ series.

“I got down to [the last few], went and met Jason Sudeikis, had two tests for it, and I was so close. But my friend Phil Dunster, he got the part in the end. And he was so good.”

Luca continued: “If you watch [something that you’ve auditioned for] and the person who gets it is really awful or whatever, it makes you feel worse.

“But [Phil] was so good, it’s like, ‘OK, fine, I get it. This is going to be an easier pill to swallow’.”

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Danny Dyer’s Biggest Hope For Rivals Season 3 Is To ‘See His Top Lip Again’

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Rivals is back for a new season with more bonking, more affairs and, of course, more moustaches.

Set in the fictional Rutshire in the hedonistic late 80s, the Jilly Cooper adaptation has turned some of British TV’s most popular actors into international sex symbols.

No one is more surprised by this than Danny Dyer, who plays the lovable Freddie Jones, especially because of his era-appropriate wig and moustache.

“I just want to see my top lip again,” he joked to the BBC of his facial hair, admitting he has to keep the moustache for around seven months of the year while he’s filming filming.

“My grandchildren only know me as a moustached man, and that depresses me slightly,” he added, referring to his daughter Dani Dyer’s three children, Santiago, Star and Summer.

Danny has one hope for his character in series three – that his character might move with the times and ditch his trademark tache.

“Obviously, we’re coming to the end of the 80s now, so if we go again, we’re sort of encroaching on the early 90s and hopefully this can come off,” he quipped.

Back in 2024, when Rivals first became a surprise hit, Danny opened up about some of the “backhanded” remarks he had received about his performance.

Speaking with his daughter Dani on their podcast Live and Let Dyers, the Mr Big Stuff actor said: “Some people were alluding to the fact that, you know, I’m the one that sort of come out of it, really, in a way, going, ‘Oh God, he’s a really good actor.’”

“I’m getting this backhanded [praise] from these big, broadsheets,” he continued. “Actually, there was a headline that went, ‘The biggest plot twist about Rivals is that Danny Dyer can act’. In a way, I’m going, ‘Oh thanks for the compliment’, at the same time going, ‘Well, fuck off’.”

Although it’s not yet been announced, Rivals fans should feel confident – thanks to the rave reviews that season two has received – that a third run is on the cords.

“We’ve already planned season three,” executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins said recently on the red carpet for the second series. “It’s not officially greenlit yet, but the stories are all done.”

He added: “We’re ready to go.”

The first three episodes premiere on 15 May 2026, on Disney +, followed by one a week until 5 June. The second half of the season will premiere later in 2026.

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‘She’s Just Glorious’: David Tennant On Rivals Reunion With Doctor Who Star

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David Tennant has revealed that his ‘favourite days on set’ Disney+’s new TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s famous 1988 novel involved a familiar face.

David appears alongside Alex Hassell, Aidan Turner, Danny Dyer, Katherine Parkinson and Victoria Smurfit in the ‘raunchy’ new drama, which is set in the English countryside in the mid-1980s.

But the Doctor Who star’s on-screen wife, Lady Monica Baddingham, is played by none other than former co-star Claire Rushbrook, who starred alongside Tennant in season 2 episodes The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit as Ida Scott.

“And to have that husband and wife relationship. When she embodied Monica, there was no doubt of exactly who that woman was,” he added.

“She’s just glorious, and she’s also one of the loveliest, funniest people with the dirtiest sense of humour. I think possibly my favourite days on set were the Mr and Mrs Baddingham days.”

So far, the show has won unanimous praise from critics, with the Mail pointing out the show stays true to “Jilly’s obsession with bonking, boozing, groping and relentless political incorrectness”, while The Telegraph’s review hailed it as an “un-PC romp” that “stays true to Jilly Cooper’s spirit”.

Rivals arrives on Disney+ on 18 October.

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