‘Rivals’ Star David Tennant & EP Dominic Treadwell-Collins Break Down Season 2 Part 2’s Explosive First 3 Episodes: Grief, Scandal, Scheming & Heartbreak

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about Season 2 Episodes 7, 8 and 9 of Hulu‘s Rivals, which is based on Jilly Cooper’s 1988 novel of the same name. Part 2 of Hulu’s Rivals picked up in the immediate aftermath of the Part 1 finale which ended with ruthless TV executive Tony’s (David Tennant) long-suffering wife Monica (Claire Rushbrook) dying in a car crash during a storm as she was on her way to tell Tony’s rival Declan (Aidan Turner) about her husband’s affair with his actress wife Maud (Victoria Smurfit). What’s more, Monica died in the hands of Tony’s mortal enemy Rupert (Alex Hassell) who got to deliver the news to him. Tony spent the opening episode of Part 2 reeling from Monica’s tragic death while facing the disdain of his own son Archie (Louis Landau) whose discovery of his father’s affair with Maud became the final straw for Monica to seek a divorce and go on that dangerous drive in the storm. Watch on Deadline Following — quite literally — the Chekhov’s gun dramatic principle, the episode begins with Tony holding a rifle, which he used to chase away mourners attending the post-funeral reception at his house before firing it at the end, killing Monica’s beloved peacocks. In a typical Rivals fashion, the somber funeral scene, featuring Archie breaking down while eulogizing his mom, was followed by sex romps involving two of the show’s couples in secret relationships, Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson) and Freddie (Danny Dyer), and Charles (Gary Lamont) and Gerald (Hubert Burton). Taking place in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic, the 1987-set season saw Gerald, a newly minted Conservative MP, come out as gay to his aristocratic fiancée Muffy (Eliot Salt) who, after the initial shock, opted to proceed with the engagement as long as Gerald broke things off with Charles — which he did, leaving Charles devastated. In the same very eventful episode, Tony told Maud he loved her. And, after almost everyone else had figured it out, Declan finally found out about their affair and made a spectacle of himself, chasing and accidentally knocking over Maud at the bonfire for all the society to see. Rupert and Taggie (Bella Maclean) continued their will they-won’t they dance, with Taggie’s latest outreach at the end of Episode 9 rebuffed by Rupert with the argument that he wouldn’t be able to make her happy for long. And the Concorde made another appearance as Rupert and Declan flew to New York to bring Cameron (Nafessa Williams) back after falsely accusing her of being Tony’s mole at their Venturer TV venture. Speaking to Deadline, Rivals star Tennant and writer/executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins discussed some of the biggest developments in Episodes 7, 8 and 9. Check back after the Dec. 2 Season 2 finale for Part 2 of Deadline’s interview which breaks down the ending and how it sets up the previously greenlighted 12-episode Season 3, the season arcs of Rupert & Taggie and Freddie & Izzie as well as Perdita, whom Declan was not too pleased to meet in Episode 9 having burnt the Rupert kompromat about her in Season 1. ‘Rivals’: David Tennant and Claire Rushbrook in Episode 206 Why Monica had to die DEADLINE: Monica’s death has changed the paradigm and pushed Tony to the brink. Why did you make that change from the book where she is very much alive? THREADWELL-COLLINS: That year in the UK, there was a massive storm at exactly this date, there was a genuine storm that changed the country a lot. Everyone at a certain age remembers the great storm, we still talk about it, so we always had to storyline that. One of the things we always talked about in the writers’ room was there needed to be consequences for this rivalry. Otherwise, firstly, these silly men were going to keep going at each other, and actually, it needed to have some repercussions and some penance in the real world. We talked a lot about a character dying, and we went through many many permutations. Monica was one my favorite characters, played by one of the best actresses in the show. She’s brilliant in Jilly’s book, but I’d also taken elements of my friend’s mother who I knew so well and loved and put her into it as well. It felt like we had to lose someone utterly beloved. When we talked about killing Monica, I kept running away from it and saying, “Oh no, no, no! Let’s think about other characters.” And we did. We storylined with other characters in our heads, and we kept coming back to Monica. I think also because we have Claire Rushbrook, who in the UK has been known as one of our best actresses, playing Monica. If we didn’t use her, if we hadn’t done this, we would have had Monica turning a blind eye to Tony for the rest of the series going forward, and I never wanted to do that. I wanted to show everyone and new people, new audiences, just how brilliant Claire Rushbrook was. ‘Rivals’ Episode 207 Hulu Dignified Funeral Followed By Raunchy Escapades THREADWELL-COLLINS: Monica’s death had to be painful. It had to cause Tony to act in the most terrible way. And truth be told, I didn’t know we were going to come back after Season 2, so I also went, Okay, this could be the last [season] of Rivals, let’s go blazing out into the sun. No other character’s death would have been so painful; I pine for her and I miss her. And Laura Wade and I writing Episode 7, the funeral episode, we were really careful to pay tribute to Monica, to Claire Rushbrook, to do a funeral with elegance and dignity, and then also shake it up and move from George Michael’s Faith into Lizzie and Freddie bonking in a hotel room. We were really careful to try and calibrate it. DEADLINE: Talk about using George Michael’s Faith for that transition and the series featuring so many 1980s hit songs. THREADWELL-COLLINS: A lot of the songs are from the book, and when we write, all the writers, we have a playlist of music from that year. I always liked music from 1987 for this series, and then you also go back and look at some of the stuff in the 70s; it’s been really fun. For me, the Eureka moment was Episode 7, realizing that George Michael’s Faith moves from organ music into that sexy beat and going, Oh gosh, that’s how we can segue between a funeral and a sex scene. A lot of music will inspire us when we’re writing. I think music’s such an important part of the show, it gives you all the feels and gives you that nostalgic feeling of being back in the 80s. Half the songs are things I heard in the back of my dad’s car when I was a kid and there’s something very comforting about that. DEADLINE: There was a funny moment after the post-funeral sex, with Muffy trying to clean a sperm smudge off Gerald’s tie. Was that inspired by the hair-gel scene in There Is Something About Mary? THREADWELL-COLLINS: No, that was not Something About Mary, I wish it was, but it wasn’t. Again, Laura and I were trying to make sure that we treated the funeral like another Rivals party. How does Rivals do a funeral? It was important to have some guffaws from the audience. And that moment, I phoned Laura and said, “Look, what about there being some sperm on Gerald’s tie?” and we then started playing around with it. Laura and I will often act out bits of it together over the phone or on a Zoom, and it made us laugh. And Alex Lamb, our other exec, he then jumped in as well and said, “Okay, but if Muffy then licks her finger as you would do that. We all took it and played with it because tonally, Episode 7 was important in reintroducing everyone to Rutshire, paying homage to Monica, but also reminding an audience: you’re still going to laugh at this show. We’re not going to be completely somber. ‘Rivals’: Davi Tennant in Season 2 Monica’s Death’s Impact on Tony DEADLINE: Tony is consumed by grief after Monica’s death. But did he love her or was he just mad about losing something he owns? TENNANT: Probably both of the above. There isn’t any question that he loved her. I think she was his anchor, she was his home space, she was his touchstone. He absolutely took her for granted, and he treated her appallingly. But he needed her, and for a man who doesn’t have much of a moral compass within himself, I think she provided that for him. She probably limited his excesses, probably kept him on an equilibrium that he now does not have, which is not great for Tony going forward, I don’t think that’s going to play out very well. DEADLINE: Monica’s peacocks did look doomed from the start, knowing that the gun Tony had been holding would eventually go off. TENNANT: Did you think they were on a they were on a shaky nail from the off? DEADLINE: I did. Still, it was a little extreme. Why did he do that? TENNANT: To lose your life partner is devastating. Even for someone who’s not always the most morally engaged human, I think it’s bewildering and it’s distressing for him. He’s rudderless without her, so I think it’s quite a plausible reaction. He’s a man who doesn’t have a particularly well-oiled path to his own emotions, so I think the fact that such a traumatic moment should end with some kind of violent exorcism makes perfect sense. I think that’s who Tony is, unfortunately. DEADLINE: But if he killed a person at that moment… TENNANT: Then we would have had a very different story for Part 2 of [Season 2] but I think we should feel, and I think we do feel that in that moment it could easily have happened. Perhaps it takes his daughters on the stairs to finally make him see, to have a moment of objectivity as to what he’s doing, because he’s in a very bad place. Ultimately, what he does in that very English way is, as the episodes go forward, he sort of swallows that down, but that doesn’t mean it goes away. So there’s an acid in his stomach perhaps that is even worse than before. DEADLINE: Monica did predict that Tony would become even more dangerous after her death but if he loved her even a little, why did he completely dismiss her dying wish for truce with Rupert, telling his rival that now he doesn’t have anything else left but fight? TENNANT: Because that’s ultimately who he is. Monica, in many ways, was probably a limiting factor on him, so there’s something for him rather liberating about not having her there. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing by anyone’s reckoning, but in terms of his need to mitigate his own excesses, that’s kind of been erased by Monica leaving him. So he’s unhinged. The anchor has gone, and I suppose also if losing a wife is in some sort of very animal way a kind of a loss, then his need for victory elsewhere becomes even more energized. ‘Rivals’: Victoria Smurfit in Episode 208 The Bonfire Of The Secrets DEADLINE: Tony, clearly jealous of Maud and Declan’s reconciliation, tells her he loves her at Bonfire Night. Does he love her or is it about hurting Declan? We didn’t get a clear sense. TENNANT: Well, I think that’s very human, isn’t it? I don’t think you necessarily will get a clear sense, I’m not sure that he has a clear sense. I think, in that moment of trauma and tumult, he will say whatever he needs to say to win that particular battle. And if that is difficult for Declan, then that’s not something that he will be shy of either. I think Tony is driven by animal instincts in every way, and whatever it takes to win the prey in the moment is what he will employ. That doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t mean it but whether that really means that Maud is the love of his life, I’m not sure. He may be too psychopathic to know that himself. DEADLINE: Tony did tell Declan in Episode 9, “I didn’t want Maud, I just wanted to win.” TENNANT: I think all his motivations, whether they are carnal or professional, they’re all mixed up and they’re all fluid and they’re all just part of the churn that’s inside this at this moment pretty unhinged individual. DEADLINE: When Declan finally found out about Maud’s affair with Tony, he stopped himself from hitting her inside before chasing her outside. What prompted him to publicly chastise her. Was it just because she and Tony had had sex in the house? THREADWELL-COLLINS: They had sex in the house. It was his worst possible enemy. It is Bonfire Night, and Declan’s had a few drinks. And also, Declan is a dangerous man as well as Tony is dangerous. Declan is dangerous, and we wanted to show that he pulls himself back from that moment. We made sure of that, but we also wanted to be a bit feral. I think what’s been really important with this story is in Jilly’s book. In the original book, Tony and Maud have an affair, but it’s revealed at the end of the book. You don’t understand the journey, and because we had David Tennant, Aidan Turner, Victoria Smurfit, we wanted to see that play out and understand it. And in the book, Declan forgives her quite easily. We really wanted to play that out against Bonfire Night, it was perfect. It’s November, and it’s also a strange British celebration festival that the Americans don’t have, where we celebrate someone trying to burn down Parliament. It is bizarre. ‘Rivals’: (l-r) Gary Lamont and Hubert Burton in Season 1 Charlie & Gerald’s Break-Up DEADLINE: Rivals introduced a gay love story that is not in the book with Charles and Gerald. Can you talk about that creative decision and the duo’s heartbreaking Episode 8 break-up scene? THREADWELL-COLLINS: It’s always been important to me in everything I do to tell queer stories as a gay man myself. In the book, Charles and Gerald don’t even cross, I don’t think, they’re two characters who exist in Jilly’s world. It was important to us to have a gay love story that has as much weight as the straight love stories, and have the audience rooting for Charles and Gerald. But we also need to be aware of the fact that this isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s 1987, and Charles and Gerald couldn’t easily be together. You’ve got the shadows of AIDS around us as well, and we talked about being as true as possible. I mean, we put Charles and Gerald through the wringer, and hopefully get some joy at the end of the series. But we’ve got to be really aware of the the social context of the story, while also having audiences who maybe wouldn’t have watched a gay love story before start rooting for them. I think that’s the power of television to change the world a bit.