Aidan Turner has tackled many roles throughout his career, but the Irish actor admits that his latest project, Rivals, felt unlike anything he’s ever worked on before.
The Poldark star, who plays Declan O’Hara in the hit Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles book of the same name, revealed how filming “was so much craic” and how the reaction to the show felt “different”.
Speaking at Advertising Week Europe 2025, he said: “Even from the first week, I knew something was different once it was cast, and I hadn’t met a lot of the cast before but I kind of had an idea we might gel.
“But just immediately… (we) just became pals, and it became so much craic.”
Continuing on, he said: “People have come up to me, and it’s never happened before… everyone’s come up and said it looks like so much fun – I want to be in it. And they’re not actors.
“I think that that’s something that we all felt on set when we were shooting it.”
Set in England during the 1980s, season one follows the bitter rivalry between Rupert Campbell-Black, played by Alex Hassell, and Lord Tony Baddingham played by David Tennant, in TV broadcasting.
And with the season already confirmed to come back, we can’t help but wonder who will be returning.
Meanwhile, on producing the second series, Dominic Treadwell-Collins shared: “When you’re sitting there story-lining the second season of the show… everyone has an opinion.
“What we’re trying to do is take what we did in season one and go bigger and bolder, and we are filming in other places.”
We can’t wait to see!
