This interview includes spoilers for “Rivals” through the first half of Season 2.
David Tennant has played many dastardly men: A real-life serial killer (in “Des”), a predator who can control people’s minds (in “Jessica Jones”) and, most recently, a merciless media exec in “Rivals,” which returns to Hulu on Wednesday.
“The thing with all these characters,” Tennant said in a recent video call, “is that none of them are regarding themselves as villains.” He said his “Rivals” character, Tony Baddingham, “is just pursuing his super objectives very clearly, and very ruthlessly.”
Those objectives are to claw his way to the very top of his various circles in Thatcher’s Britain. Professionally, it’s television broadcasting. Socially, it’s the well-heeled and well-liquored countryside set first introduced in the “Rutshire Chronicles,” Jilly Cooper’s best-selling romance series, the basis of “Rivals.”
Like the novels, “Rivals” offers lots of raunch and lots of horse-riding but also a sharp-eyed look at British class. Tony did not inherit a country pile like his wife, Monica (Claire Rushbrook), or his media business bête noire Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell).
“He has a very keen sense of injustice about how the world is structured and how unfair that is, and the glass ceiling of class,” Tennant said.
Overseas “Rivals” runs on Disney+, and it has been the No. 1 show on the platform in multiple countries and has inspired gushing coverage in Britain. When viewers last saw Tony midway through the second season — spoilers start now — Monica had just died in a car accident after discovering one of his many affairs. The new episodes open with a guest at her funeral saying fearfully that now that Tony has “lost his conscience, he can do what he likes.”
In a video interview earlier this week, Tennant discussed what’s next for Tony, why the show has resonated with viewers and how his wife helped convince him of the joys of romance novels. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
Why do you think the show has had such a warm reception in Britain and the United States?
Maybe it wasn’t like anything else that was around. It took quite a swing creatively, and especially those first episodes felt very fresh.
I did not see it coming. I’ll be honest. It was very much led by my wife, Georgia, who read the scripts when they first came through. I read them, and was going, “Where does this sit? I can’t quite taste this.” And she read it and went, “This is going to be massive. There’s an appetite for this, and an excitement in it that isn’t really like anything else.”
The show does have an unusual tone, with lots of juicy (and sometimes silly) sex sitting alongside quite complex characters and boardroom maneuvering.
Tonally it was always difficult to know quite what it was. When we shot the first season, there were endless conversations among the cast going, “How broadly comic can we be? Where are the stakes? Where’s the gritty realism?” We all felt a little unsure.
Because there’s something slightly heightened about that world of ’80s success anyway. And then you sprinkle all these characters in it, and it’s just like one degree above real life. I think that’s quite a delicate place to land. Luckily, Elliot Hegarty, who was the lead director and who’s directed a lot of this season as well, had a really clear vision. He knew exactly what he was going for and that cocktail of tones.
So we now feel a bit more confident about what the show is, and then that allows the show to be a bit more confident as well.
Did you know the novels before signing on to the show?
I didn’t at all, I now feel rather ashamed to admit. I’d probably slightly dismissed them as, oh, they’re those big books you buy at airports that are a little bit dirty and slightly disposable. I’d never opened one. My wife recorded the audiobooks, so since that’s happened I’ve now gone back and listened. The books are addictive!
The fact that they have continued to be part of the cultural conversation over the years means that there was clearly something Jilly was doing that was a bit more like Dickens than she was ever given credit for.
It’s true that like Dickens, Cooper was interested in critiquing British class politics.
She writes about the class system and about sexual politics with a very keen eye. I think the show shares that sense of the idiosyncrasies, the truths of human interaction.
And yes, a lot of it is about sex, but then so is a lot of life, I suppose. That sometimes meant the books were slightly overlooked because there was something titillating. But sexual politics drive all our lives, and the way that interacts with the professional world is constantly fascinating, and worthy of exploration.
For all his terrible behavior, Tony almost feels like a tragic figure, given his desperation to climb the ladder at any cost.
Thank you for understanding. [Laughs.] No amount of winning will ever quite get him to the top table, and that’s his engine. It doesn’t justify many of the things that he does, but it helps you to understand why he got there.
Where do we find Tony at the beginning of these new episodes?
Losing Monica is fundamental. She allowed him to do many of the things he did because he had this safe harbor, and removing that is not particularly healthy. And we see him untethered. As he is this creature of instinct, he benefits from having some sort of moral compass, even if it’s not within himself. I think he, in some terrible ways, feels rather liberated. But it’s not great for Tony, in terms of his humanity.
Certain aspects of the original books, which Cooper wrote in the ’80s, have been changed for the screen, including some of the encounters in which women don’t give consent and including gay male characters living in Thatcher’s Britain.
Absolutely, and that’s a story that can maybe only be told when we’re looking back from a lens of now. And I know that our showrunner, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, was always very keen to make sure that if you’re presenting a series that’s got a lot to do with sexuality, you can’t just ignore that.
So, particularly through the story of the characters Charles (Gary Lamont) and Gerald (Hubert Burton) and the challenge of being a gay man in public life, and what that does to you. Then we have AIDS coming in — that’s a hugely important addition to the source material, for sure.
Cooper died last year, but she was involved in developing the first two seasons of the show. What was it like working with her?
It was so lovely to get to see her enjoying her glorious final act. I think she’d felt a little written off as nonserious, and then for this to come roaring in and for her to be so celebrated in her final years …
She was part of the process of the script writing, and she was there on set and invited us to her house for parties. She was a very active executive producer for the first two seasons, and was even part of the discussions for what will happen in Season 3. She was actively enjoying it, and I think feeling vindicated. Quite right, too.
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