#jillycooper

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Aidan at the Harper’s Bazaar Women Of The Year Awards 2024 at the Claridge’s Hotel in London the 5th November

With Alex Hassell, Bella Maclean and Dame Jilly Cooper...the « Rivals » squad in action !! 👠👠👠

I think she loves him 🌹❤️

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RIVALS ARE TOGETHER AGAIN

So much Love ❤️❤️❤️

I made a close up of our beloved Aidan in slow motion with Madame Jilly Cooper ❤️🌹

Adorable

New pic 💯💯💯💯

For Radio Times !!

New article soon to come !!

Thanks to my friend Isademrio ATI (Aidan Turner International on Facebook)

Here is below the written transcription of the second article, published yesterday, from the Total Film magazine.

Thanks to Emma Jones 🙏👍🌺

Total Film - October 2024

When Teasers visits the set of Rivals in Bristol, there’s no question who the real star is. While we may have just watched Aidan Turner and David Tennant (as gimlet-eyed TV journalist Declan O’Hara and his ambitious, unscrupulous boss Lord Tony Baddingham) sweep in to 1987’s British Television Awards, and await appearances from Danny Dyer, Katherine Parkinson and Alex Hassell, a slight 86-year-old is inside, pretending to eat dinner.

‘It was lovely,’ Jilly Cooper tells us afterwards, enthusing about her cameo. ‘They curled my hair beautifully!’

The queen of the bonkbuster couldn’t be more thrilled with Disney+’s eight-part adaptation of her 1988 novel. ‘They’ve cast gorgeous people of both sexes!’ she beams. ‘It does feel like a period piece to me, because it has lots of macho men who are allowed to be real men. As an executive producer, I can see how much trouble they’re taking with it. They’ve looked after the plot, although occasionally they’ll change things and I’ll have a bit of a sulk. But when it appears on the screen, it’s brilliant.’

Rivals certainly sets its stall out from the first shot, buttocks thrusting in a Concorde toilet and Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love grinding away on the soundtrack. The pace barely relents as the rakish Rupert Campbell-Black (Hassell) cuts a swathe through the society women of the Cotswolds and locks horns with Baddingham over the future of the latter’s television company. Rupert’s friend, novelist Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson), is also on hand to cut him down to size, while herself enjoying some extramarital excitement with Dyer’s self-made millionaire. In short, plenty of sex, stilettos and a salon’s worth of bubble perms and mullets. But also some salutary lessons.

‘I hope it cheers everyone up,’ agrees Cooper. ‘But I also think it’ll make people realise that integrity is important. There’s not enough of it about these days.’

Gabriel Tate

Aidan Turner (words from the journalist Gabriel Tate, not from Aidan)

Who is Declan O’Hara?

He’s a journalist with a wife and a couple of kids. They’ve had to leave London for the Cotswolds, although we’re not initially sure why, and it coincides with an o fer he’s received to leave the BBC and work for Tony Baddingham’s TV company. He’s a workaholic and impetuous – he generally thinks with his pen irst, ists a very quick second.

We have to talk about Declan’s moustache…

It makes a real statement, doesn’t it? You can hide behind a beard, whereas this Tom Selleck thing puts you front and centre. Weirdly, I looked very like my dad did back in the 1980s.

Why did Rivals appeal?

Jilly is brilliant at writing characters and, while it is wickedly funny, we cover some very serious themes as well, asking what sort of behaviour is acceptable today and what have we thrown in the bin.

Was filming as much fun as it looked?

It really was. There was one dinner-party scene where, the previous night, our entire cast had had a party. A lot of people were probably playing drunk for real that day – lots of sunglasses and dark shadows under eyes. Although I felt awful, witnessing other people’s pain was hilarious…