How we made Rivals: ‘Female pleasure was discussed at length’

The producer behind the hit show on sozzled lunches with Jilly Cooper, keeping the sexy spirit of the book – and his own mother’s verdict

I would happily argue that Rivals is one of the great English novels. It’s a witty, naughty, funny, sexy book that pokes at what it means to be British – in 1986 and now. Jilly Cooper’s reputation as the doyenne of “bonkbusters” is utterly deserved – she wears the crown proudly, busting apart the British class system with copious amounts of heavenly, funny, very real sex. 
I’ve been desperate to adapt Jilly’s novels for television for years. When I was a teenager, my mother’s well-thumbed Jilly Cooper romances lined the bookshelf on the landing of our house. Each novel had a woman’s name, a glamorous soft-focus model on the cover and represented all that was forbidden to a 12-year-old boy. I’d discover 35 years later, at Jilly’s kitchen table, that she herself was – of course – that model: Beach Jilly, Skiing Jilly, she was better than Barbie. And even though I didn’t know her, she was Jilly to me, as she is to everyone. Jilly’s our naughty friend who sneaks us a cigarette and explains what a really good orgasm is. 
As a team working on the TV adaptation of Rivals, we’ve all had the Jilly initiation – sitting at that kitchen table as she serves up her notoriously lethal fruit salad. Macerated in gin for days, it works as a truth serum, everyone around the table confessing their darkest secrets to Jilly as she sits smiling at the head of the table like a conjuror, collecting our stories while also wanting to prod at attitudes to sex now compared to the 1980s. 
Our writers’ room had a huge diversity of genders, classes, ages, sexualities and races. For days, we talked about sex. Sex in the book, our own sexual experiences, disasters, fantasies. The straight male writer in the room sat wide-eyed as female pleasure was discussed at length – we were all very clear that this would be a show that had a female gaze. At one point, a young writer argued with an older writer who admitted her sexuality was defined by Jilly Cooper’s books. “You can’t say you want a man to throw you against a wall and shag you.” “I just did – and what’s wrong with that?” 
We interrogated every moment that would be troubling to a modern audience, specifically the fact that the novel’s big romance between Taggie and Rupert starts with him groping her at a dinner party. It’s an infamous moment, a horrific meet-cute and a huge obstacle to Rupert and Taggie getting together. We felt it had to stay. Laura Wade, the Olivier-award winning playwright and screenwriter who helped lead the writers’ room, was to write that pivotal episode. 
Laura wanted to lean right into the moment. In Laura’s script, the men around the table bray approvingly about it in their old school ties – but afterwards Rupert is harshly upbraided by his friend and conscience, Lizzie, with a line that’s the perfect marriage of 1986 and 2024 – original Laura Wade that sounds like vintage Jilly Cooper: “Women aren’t just a buffet, laid out for you to snack on.” 
Jilly has been brilliant at including gay characters in her novels – something that has always chimed with me. I grew up in the 1980s, the time of Section 28 and the horrific Aids tombstone advert. I knew I was gay. And it was terrifying. We decided that Charles Fairburn – a minor gay character in the novel – had to have a storyline of his own. He now has a romance with closeted Conservative Gerald Middleton, a coupling that still makes Jilly cry when she watches the edits.
Jilly’s been wonderfully liberal – though at first, even she checked our decision to have villain Tony Baddingham catch his son Archie “receiving manual stimulation from an estate worker”, unsure that we needed to see Archie up against a tree with Kevin Makepiece. We asked Jilly to trust us – Archie’s sexuality isn’t settled yet and Jilly was totally up for us going on that adventure with him.  
The creative executive producers – Alexander Lamb, Felicity Blunt, Laura and myself – along with our unflappable producer Eliza Mellor, met many potential lead directors for the show. It was Elliot Hegarty, who was new to Jilly’s novels, whose vision most excited us all – something uniquely British, fun and sexy, with a muscular, masculine energy as well as a female one. With Dee Koppang O’Leary and Alexandra Brodksi as our other directors, we talked at length about the female gaze dominating the show. 
We open with Rupert’s bare buttocks as he very clearly gives journalist Beattie Johnson a squealing orgasm as Concorde goes supersonic. Even our Rivals theme tune is a duelling duet between a female and male opera singer as they finally reach climax together. But the female voice is always in charge. 
We all worked closely with our intimacy coordinator, Yarit Dor, and her team. Sex in our show is very much part of the story and we were very clear that all our sex scenes should move the story forward. Yes, Rivals is titillating but it’s also deeply human. We don’t want to make the audience feel uncomfortable, in the same way we ensured that none of our cast felt uncomfortable filming the scenes. After a recent screening, I waited for my mother – a devoted Telegraph reader – to give her opinion. She thought Mary Whitehouse would be turning in her grave – and couldn’t wait for all her friends to watch it. 
In Jilly’s world, sex is the great leveller. The sex in her books can be transactional, orgasmic, messy, funny, always human. Whatever your age, class, sexuality, or race, your sexual preference, or the political party you chose to vote for, Jilly Cooper reminds us that we are all the same with our clothes off.
All episodes of Rivals are available now on Disney+
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