[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for all of Rivals Season 1.]
The adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, now streaming on Hulu, changes a few things from the book, most notably the ending.
Rivals ends its first season in such a way that we need a Season 2. Tony (David Tennant) learns about Cameron (Nafessa Williams) and Rupert’s (Alex Hassell) relationship. Tony and Cameron’s subsequent fight ends with her hitting him hard with the award they won—and possibly killing him?! Meanwhile, Rupert and Taggie (Bella Maclean) finally kiss, and Maud (Victoria Smurfit) leaves Declan (Aidan Turner), who chooses his work—as his, Rupert, and Freddie’s (Danny Dyer) Venturer is given the go-ahead to pitch for the franchise against Tony’s Corinium.
Below, executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins does a deep dive with us on Rivals Season 1 and begins to tease what could be ahead should it be renewed.
Will there be a Season 2? You’ve set up so much.
Dominic Treadwell-Collins: We’re always hopeful. Alex Lamb, who works with me, we ran EastEnders, this long-running soap opera in the UK, for a very long time. So we’re used to dropping down story bombs and delving into character a bit more deeply. I’ve been so desperate to put these books on television for such a long time and we’ve brought the rights to all of them. So we’re always hopeful that we’re going to come back and we left it on a very big cliffhanger on purpose. It’s not in the books. That was a big creative decision. We wanted to delve into the books as much as possible and we’ve done half the book.
At this point where we end in the book, Tony beats Cameron up and he beats her to a pulp and she goes to Rupert. That is an awful big moment in the book, and we in the writers’ room said very early on, we are not going to, in our version, just have a man beat a woman to a pulp. Because we decided very early on to make Cameron a woman of color. We’re not showing that on the screen. Our Cameron is slightly different to the Cameron in the book. What I think is wonderful is we’ve always said Tony hits Cameron, but Cameron hits Tony back and really hits him back.
Courtesy of Robert Viglasky / Disney
It came out of a moment in lockdown. I was moving a cupboard and my BAFTA for EastEnders was on the top and my husband said, clear the cupboard before you move it. I ignored him. The BAFTA fell on my head and I was concussed, I was hospitalized. I was told that if it had fallen by an inch more, I’d be dead. Which death by BAFTA for a television producer, actually, if you’re going to go, it’s kind of cool. But early on, Felicity Blunt, Alex, Jilly, and I laughed about that and said, can we not layer in this award that in a Chekhovian way is played earlier, that ultimately Cameron grabs and whacks Tony over the head with. It gives us a really good noisy cliffhanger. It also is something that is a shock to people who love the books. So it comes out of nowhere. It gives you a brilliant cliffhanger. If we never come back, it leaves a lot of questions up in the air, but hopefully, we come back to do more.
But it was also a serious point. I did not want to have Tony beat Cameron to a pulp. Our message for our show is that if you look at the journey that every woman takes in Series 1, they’re all much stronger by the end. We were not going to have Cameron weaker. We actually wanted Cameron to be stronger and Cameron to whack back and hit Tony as he’s surrounded by himself doing a speech on lots of televisions about the power of television felt delicious to us.
Is Tony dead?
There are so many possibilities about what could happen but what we do know is revenge is a dish best served on television.
Another change from the book is that ring and Tony’s offer to leave Monica. Did he really love Cameron? Would he really have left Monica?
Yes. I love this book so much and that’s why I wanted to delve deeper. Monica on screen is more nuanced than in the book. Monica in the book doesn’t really care about—Tony comes to her room once a week for athletic sex and that’s about it. We painted their relationship as a lot more nuanced. In the book, Tony possesses Cameron. Cameron is a possession. I still think in our show he sees her as a possession, but, because we’ve got David Tennant, we want more layers there. And so when Tony finds out that Cameron has been sleeping with Rupert, we wanted not just anger, but we wanted heartbreak.
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And the moment that’s so delicious in the book that Laura Wade writes about in Episode 8, when in such a Jilly Cooper way an affair is revealed through a dog licking Cameron on reels of television that Tony’s watching next to his wife, that felt so our show. If he was just angry that his possession was taken, that’s punchy, but we’re a show that’s about love as well. I believe he loves her. He thinks he loves her. Maybe if she turned around and just said, yeah, I’m leaving you, in a week’s time, he’d go, I’m a bit bored. But Tony believes he loves her, she challenges him.
And we very much played the moment after the awards when they walked through the London Square and he’s already publicly given her this award and said, Corinium is what it is because of you. And then in the square, they have that very beautiful romantic moment and you go, actually, he does love her. He takes her out to a restaurant for the first time in public and dances with her and starts singing to her, and you see his vulnerability. Then he finds out next to his wife what she has done. And then you have that moment on the stairs. We knew scripting it we had David Tennant. So you see him break and you see he’s actually heartbroken and then the rage comes again and you as an audience are terrified about what he’s going to do. A Tony who loves Cameron is much more dangerous to us.
The Rupert and Taggie build-up culminated in that kiss. But then there’s Cameron, and she told Tony she’d marry Rupert to stay. How does she feel about Rupert? How does Rupert feel about Cameron and Taggie?
We feel that Cameron has fallen for Rupert while in Spain. When he takes her to the ambassador’s reception, Cameron is seen. You see a different, lighter Cameron; she’s laughing at that dinner, he’s dancing with her in front of all these other guests. She goes, this is what a proper relationship should be like, not sneaking around. She comes back a lot stronger, but also feeling something for Rupert. They continue their romance after Spain. It’s not just a holiday romance. Taggie’s not on Cameron’s radar when it comes to Rupert. Cameron thinks, there could be something here. When Rupert at the studio says, I promise I will look after you, Cameron believes it. And Rupert believes that in that moment.
Courtesy of Robert Viglasky / Disney
What we’ve played is that Rupert’s trying very hard to keep away from Taggie. He’s made a promise to Declan. There is an age difference. He’s still got a lot of growing to do. He knows he could mess up Taggie, so he’s trying to keep away from her, but there’s a magnetic pull. In the kitchen, when he says, I can’t breathe without you, that’s true. She makes him a better man and he knows it. And he’s not thinking in that moment. What I love about Rupert is he does change in our Series 1 because of Taggie. He wants to be a better man for her. And that’s why he’s also saying to Cameron, I will look after you. But it also leaves you with hope and confusion about after this, what will happen if Cameron, as per the book, runs to Rupert and says, you promised to protect me. It’s deliciously messy, which is always the best television.
Maud reaches a breaking point and leaves Declan. But is there hope for them? Declan and Venturer can now pitch for the franchise so the issue between them isn’t going away.
We’ve made Maud stronger [than in the book]. And Laura Wade’s writing in that scene in the kitchen with Taggie when she says, I need to work and I’ve put you all first and I am going to choose myself—she’s been a selfish mother. She’s been often a terrible mother, but she chooses her work and herself and that’s important to us. Declan doesn’t understand that. When she’s packing her bag, he doesn’t understand why she’s going. He’s completely neglected her for his mistress, which is his job. Their relationship’s not straightforward. They come back from the party and he says, everyone was looking at you. And the surprise for the audience is that she says, yeah, do you like it? And he says yes. And they start having sex because they’re kind of turned on by this.
What we wanted to do at the end was Maud breaks free and follows her own path. Declan, after this, would have to think, how do I get Maud back? Is my work, my other important love in my life, more important than Maud? And what I find interesting is because Declan is so bullish, you know as an audience, he’s not going to just run after. He doesn’t run after her. In Episode 8, he lets her go. She says there’s a phone call. He takes the phone call, he doesn’t chase her out of the house. And yet you see Maud outside the house smiling, knowing the phone call’s coming. She’s still happy for him. Despite it all, there’s a love between them and they’re always going to be fiery, but it’s not straightforward.
What’s been really complicated scripting the series was making sure they have a really interesting and different relationship to a lot of relationships you see onscreen. A lot of that came from Aidan and Victoria—they play the characters with such warmth and love and there’s an Irish earthiness to both of them. I was very keen to cast to type. You’ve got Aidan playing his own Irish accent, which he hasn’t done for a long time. You’ve got Victoria Smurfit who’s just fantastic. The two of them would often give us little notes on the scripts and saying, can we make this a bit more Irish?
Courtesy of Robert Viglasky / Disney
And I was really keen and firm with Disney and with the casting team that Cameron should be played by an American actress, so for a U.S. audience, it has an authenticity. An American audience would’ve watched and said, that’s a British actress doing an American accent. We wanted an American audience to be with Cameron coming into the Cotswolds and finding it quite other and learning with her. Nafessa’s so good and brings a warmth to Cameron who in the book is quite steely. She can be steely, but she has this amazing warmth underneath it all.
What could see in a potential Season 2?
There’s more of the book. I’m always planning. I’ve laid down bombs throughout. At the end of Episode 4, when Declan has been interviewing Rupert, he’s got this envelope and we don’t know what’s in this envelope. And you see when he burns it, the name Perdita. We’ve talked about the Cooperverse and always thought, how can we hopefully run with these characters and see more from them? We’ve laid down a lot of Easter eggs.
The Tony-Rupert rivalry and David and Alex together were so good throughout Season 1. I want more of that.
That’s the muscular story taking you through it all, Tony versus Rupert. And in the book, there’s even more to play. … What I’ve always done is talk to Jilly all the way through about where else we would go with the books. We talked about Game of Thrones, we talked about these bigger shows that have big fan love for them but actually bring a whole new audience. What has been wonderful is having Jilly as a really, really clever executive producer who sat on set with us, but also came to the writers’ room a couple of times; everything we did, we ran past her. When we decided to do half the book and stopped where we stopped, we also talked to her about where else we would want to go, and so we’ve got her sign in and then other things that we’ve gone, we’re not sure how this would work on television, we’ve even got her brain thinking and buzzing about how else to play things. So for me, Tony and Rupert’s rivalry and the destruction that it causes can go much, much bigger and be more Greek in its devastation.
Charles (Gary Lamont) and Gerald’s (Hubert Burton) romance isn’t in the book. I loved that change. Did you know from the start that you wanted to include it and the path you wanted to take them on?
Always. As a gay kid reading the book, it was lovely to see gay characters in there, but Charles didn’t have his own story. Alex Lamb and I are both gay men, and we wanted to write about what it was like to be closeted in the ‘80s, especially because Gerald is a conservative politician and we wanted them to have a love story as sweeping and important and heartbreaking as Freddie and Lizzie’s [Katherine Parkinson]. And so there was a lot of care went into the two of them so we would make the audience root for—which you have done—them and want them to be together.
And then ultimately they do get together in episode eight, but then there is the sting that the way for them to do it, because Gerald is a politician, Gerald’s going to get married and they’re going to continue this strange relationship hidden under the covers. And that’s what it would’ve been like then. So it’s authentic, but it’s also heartbreaking. In our writers’ room, some of the young writers said, well, could you not just get Charles and Gerald together happily ever after? And we said, well, no, because that’s not true. It’s bittersweet, their ending. But what’s lovely is having the audience rooting for a gay couple right from the beginning, and that’s really important to me.
Rivals, Streaming now, Hulu
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