It's the TV series that's got everybody with an internet connection hot under the collar, but there is one small detail that Dame Jilly Cooper didn't totally agree with regarding Disney+'s adaptation of her bestselling 1988 novel, Rivals.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the eight-part series' premiere on October 18, Cooper said: 'How much of a say did I have? Not much,' adding that her grandson Jago was a runner on the production, so when she visited the set, she was better known as 'Jago's granny'.
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There were, however, parts of the script that Cooper, who was an executive producer on the show, didn't entirely agree with, most of which were pertaining to the characters' bedtime activity. 'I did occasionally say, "No, I don't think they should be jumping on each other quite so early in the story" and things like that,' the novelist said.
The first episode of Rivals opens with a sex scene set on Concorde (which was filmed on Aerospace Bristol on-board an actual Concorde plane) which, Cooper noted, wasn't in the book. 'It’s fun. It’s quite naughty too,' she said, before adding: 'There is a lot of sex. In one episode they have every member of the cast coupled and fornicating for the next 20 minutes and all of that.'
Cooper penned the first of the Rutshire Chronicles books in 1985 — Rivals is adapted from the second in the series — with the most recent in the family being Tackle! which was published in 2023.
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Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.
