Disney+ has brought Rivals back to screens for a second series, and Victoria Smurfit says the return is “more filthy and frolicsome” than ever. The actor, who plays Maud O’Hara, said the show is now “bigger, it’s juicier, it’s bolder, it’s more outrageous,” as the drama returns to the fictional Cotswolds town of Rutshire.
Smurfit’s Maud is one of the series’ most combustible figures, a former actress whose husband, the journalist-turned-chat-show-host Declan O’Hara, is played by Aidan Turner. The family — Maud, Declan and their three children — move from London to the Cotswolds, where the stakes rise fast and the social games are played in public.
What keeps the series moving is not just the scenery but the scale of the ensemble around it. The cast also includes David Tennant and Danny Dyer, and Smurfit said the new run gives nearly every character a proper arc rather than leaving them as background decoration. “Almost in every episode you’ll get an outrageous ball or polo or something where everyone’s together, but every character now gets an amazing arch to include the good, the bad and the ugly, which is unheard of really, so it’s delicious,” she said.
Rivals is based on one of Dame Jilly Cooper’s so-called bonkbusters, first published in 1988 as the second of her Rutshire Chronicles. The books chronicle the English upper and upper-middle classes in a fictional slice of the Cotswolds, against the backdrop of 1980s excess and large country estates. On screen, the story still turns on the rivalry between Rupert Campbell-Black and Lord Tony Baddingham, with the relationship between Taggie and Rupert Campbell-Black also a main plot.
That heightened, sunlit world has long been part of the appeal for Smurfit, who said she and her mother were “obsessed” with the books while she was growing up. The role also carries a personal charge: “If I could tell 14-year-old me that one day I’d be playing Maud and I’d be married to Declan, I think I would not have been able to compute that idea,” she said.
Smurfit has leaned into Maud’s contradictions, describing her as “made of two parts whiskey and one part devilment.” She said, “I think like every decent woman, you should be some part devilment and some part whiskey and it just depends on what level we’re going to be at.” She added that she hopes she is “a better mother than her,” but admitted Maud’s “bohemian spirit” is part of the fun of the part, along with the character’s vulnerability, which “excuse[s] her appalling behaviour.”
The return of Rivals lands with a simple promise: the second series is not playing it safe. It is leaning harder into the excess, the rivalries and the melodrama that made Cooper’s world famous in the first place, and Smurfit’s comments suggest the new episodes know exactly how far they are willing to go.
