Rivals star Aidan Turner has revealed he threw himself into his racy scenes with friend and co-star Victoria Smurfit.
The Irish actor, 41, stars in the Disney+ series as journalist Declan O’Hara alongside Victoria, 50, playing his wife Maud.
Rivals has its fair share of raunch-filled scenes, with husband and wife Declan and Victoria also exposed.
But talking to Sunday weatherAidan revealed that both he and Victoria had no qualms about intimacy. “Victoria is a legend, she is a friend, I love her,” he said.
“We didn’t care, we just got involved,” Aidan added, admitting that Victoria didn’t even know there were going to be intimacy coordinators until the couple arrived on set.
Rivals star Aidan Turner revealed to The Sunday Times that he threw himself into his racy scenes with his friend and co-star Victoria Smurfit.
Rivals has its fair share of raunch-filled scenes, with married couple Declan and Maud (played by Aidan and Victoria) also baring all.
The Poldark star said: “It’s technical but you’ve got to have fun too, it can’t just be labour-intensive.”
‘It’s like a dance. There are 50 hairy men walking around with cameras.’
His admission comes after it was revealed that Rivals’ younger writers had banded together to have the groping scene cut from the eight-part Disney adaptation.
It was a scene on Rivals that made viewers’ blood run cold when Dame Jilly Cooper’s dark-haired lothario Rupert Campbell Black put his hand up 19-year-old Taggie’s skirt.
Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the show’s executive producer and writer, said: “We talked a lot about the groping scene between Taggie and Rupert and whether we could get it on screen and, yes, we sat in the writer’s room and got it out.”
“Some of the younger writers said, ‘You can’t save that because we would never want Rupert and Taggie to get together if he’s groped her.’
“And we said, well, it’s got to change, it’s got to stay, it’s a commentary on the ’80s and these men.”
Since then, Rivals has been widely praised for its faithful adaptation of Dame Jilly’s original story, without shying away from the more uncomfortable truths of the pre-MeToo 1980s.
The Irish actor, 41, stars in the Disney+ series as journalist Declan O’Hara alongside Victoria, 50, playing his wife Maud.
But speaking to The Sunday Times, Aidan revealed that both he and Victoria had no qualms about intimacy.
“Victoria is a legend, she is a friend, I love her,” he said.
Alex Hassell, 44, plays Conservative MP Rupert Campbell Black, who becomes attached to Taggie, played by Bella Maclean, 26, the young daughter of fictional journalist Declan O’Hara, played by Poldark’s Aiden Turner.
EastEnders writer Treadwell-Collins told the Rivals podcast: “In the writers’ room we made sure we had young writers and older writers and a mix of sexualities and races, and we played with everything.”
“We can look at it as a period piece and celebrate the ’80s, but also judge them a little bit.”
Commenting on the groping, Hassell said Funny: “The show sheds light on how far we’ve come since then and is important to the character’s arc and his relationship with Taggie.”
“I don’t want to shy away from the fact that Rupert is a total piece of shit; if you stop at episode two, he’s just an asshole, but that’s where he has to come back from.”
Fans begged Disney+ for a second season after the show ended on a cliffhanger with a character’s life at stake.
Since then, Rivals has been widely praised for its faithful adaptation of Dame Jilly’s original story, without shying away from the more uncomfortable truths of the pre-MeToo 1980s.
Several fans fell in love with the series and admitted to watching all eight episodes in a matter of days.
‘Oh God. I guess there will be a season 2 of Rivals. They stayed so true to the book that I wasn’t expecting that ending!’: ‘I just watched Rivals and oh my god, it’s so good. Not normally my kind of thing, but they got me hooked. I need a season 2’.
The show has been rated a ‘bonkbuster’ and Disney’s sexiest series, scoring a whopping 93% on the Tomatometer.
The Mail’s Jane Fryer gave the eight-part series five stars and revealed that the show “starts with so much sex, swearing, nudity and ridiculously brilliant, tongue-in-cheek fun” that viewers won’t want to look away.
