David Tennant and Nafessa Williams Explain ‘Rivals’ Shocking Death and Major Book Changes (Exclusive)

Despite being knocked down pretty hard by his former producer and mistress Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams, commanding every scene she’s in) at the end of the first season of this dazzling drama, Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant, deliciously devilish in the role) has found ways to come out on top again and again throughout the first half of Rivals‘ sophomore run. It’s no surprise — it’s what he does. “It’s his confidence,” Williams notes. “He believes that he can do anything.”

But the TV exec is delivered a devastating blow at the end of the midseason finale, a death that is a drastic departure from the Jilly Cooper books on which the U.K. drama, which has become a hit over here in the U.S. on Hulu, is based.

The battle for control of the TV franchise — Tony’s Corinium, right now, has a leg up on his main competition, Venturer, led by his former presenter Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), his rival Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), businessman Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer), and Cameron — takes a backseat in this episode, which is Rivals at its best: outstanding acting, writing, and directing; intriguing interactions that get to the hearts of these characters; and, of course, dramatic reveals. The majority of the action takes place over the course of one night as a powerful storm hits the Cotswolds (as it really did in 1987). As secrets are revealed, a few of our favorite Rutshire Chronicles characters spiral.

For Tony, it results in a loss that leaves him off-kilter, and with someone who delights in doing terrible things to those who have wronged him (or he just hates), that could spell more trouble for the other side. “It doesn’t leave him in a particularly healthy place,” Tennant admits.

Cameron knows better than anyone what he’s capable of because she used to be by his side at Corinium, helping him plan out those evil deeds. “[She’s] seen some of his really dark moments,” Williams agrees. But she did extricate herself from that situation, with help from her beau, Rupert. Tennant admires how his costar played the “long game” of Cameron’s plan, making his character think she’d returned to him only to leave as soon as he said on record that his injuries were from an accident, rather than her hitting him with an award. Cameron has this “sense of knowing who she is,” he adds. It’s what makes the two, even though both want to succeed, so different. “Tony doesn’t ever really know who he is,” Tennant says.

It’s not an easy episode for Cameron, either. Her world, too, is shaken by a major revelation made as a result of a brave move on Taggie O’Hara’s (Bella Maclean) part. It’s “a little bruise to the ego,” Williams says.

Game-changing moments like these are fun for the producers to see brought to life. “When you have such great actors, you want to be able to see them play lots of different things and take them in new directions,” executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins shares. A lot of Season 1 was written before anyone had been cast. Now, they can write for their stars. “We all have this new confidence, which I think comes across onscreen,” he adds. It certainly takes confidence to kill off the character that they do! (Warning: Spoilers for Rivals Season 2 Episode 6 ahead!)

The Lord and Lady Fall

“I really don’t know where I’d be without her,” Tony admits in his most vulnerable moment yet. He’s talking about his wife, Monica (Claire Rushbrook, delivering an award-worthy performance), to his son, Archie (Louis Landau). It’s a touching declaration, but one that’s soured by what comes before it.

After focusing on Rupert in the early part of the season, Tony has turned his attention to the other three main players of Venturer. He bought the field that Freddie was going to purchase for his daughter, and he’s gone after Declan’s weakness: his wife, Maud (Victoria Smurfit), by first casting her in one of his productions, then beginning an affair with her. Monica is distraught upon learning the latter after seeing the nude photos of Maud from Tony’s camera that Archie developed, and after her son blurts out what he knows over dinner to his dad, it sends her off into the middle of the storm.

She finds a moment of reprieve at author Lizzie Vereker’s (Katherine Parkinson) home, where she opens up, without naming Dame Enid Spink (Selina Griffiths), about loving someone she wasn’t allowed to before Tony. She remembers being adored and wonders why they don’t let themselves have that happiness to set an example for their daughters. It’s one of the best scenes of the series, with the women acknowledging the parts of their lives that are just accepted as the norm in this scandalous world. Both take those words to heart, with Lizzie going to Freddie, despite the two breaking things off due to their marriages.

Matt Stevens

The inclusion of Monica and Enid’s past, with their shared moments in previous episodes, is a nod to the later books in Cooper’s series, when the two are a couple. “We thought, we’ve got to play that onscreen. Monica, at the moment, would never have done anything with Enid, but we had to promise she had these feelings she was bottling up, to show there was another side to Monica,” details Treadwell-Collins. “I think our Monica, and Claire Rushbrook’s Monica, is so much more of a multifaceted character than the Monica in the book.”

She is. She doesn’t hesitate to call out Tony on his behavior amidst his affairs and ruthless decisions. There’s a reason that Cooper, in Rivals, describes her as “the only woman to whom Tony was always polite, and also a little afraid.” But when she returns home from Lizzie’s, it marks a pivotal turn in their relationship, one that Tony comes to regret, but is the perfect example of how he reacts when he’s hurt: He lashes out. Hurt people hurt people, and he is especially guilty of that, as his past actions have shown.

Monica’s now empowered to tell Tony she never should have married him, she’s divorcing him, and she won’t keep quiet about why. He insists he needs and loves her “awfully much,” but she corrects him: He loves her awfully. (She’s right.) He’s cheated on her “dozens of times” (his own words in this episode), and she’s turned a blind eye. But that’s not her issue this time, she explains. Rather, she rightfully points out that his relationship with Maud is simply about using her, someone she considered a friend, to get back at Declan.

Tony doesn’t react well when he’s cornered. Here, he tries to defend his actions when he can’t. “I wanted to f**king feel something!” he yells at Monica. “I need a sexual connection like breathing to prove that I’m alive. That, you’ll never understand. You always made it clear, always, sleeping with me was something you put up with as a duty, once a week, and then back to my room with a pat on my head. You haven’t a sexual bone in your body. You are dead from the waist down.” It’s brutal. (It’s why we love moments like in Episode 4 when she pats him on the shoulder and settles in to sleep when he wants to celebrate his upcoming Midsummer Night’s Dream production.) And now, Monica gets the last word: She wasn’t always.

Courtesy of Disney

Tennant says Tony was “unnecessarily cruel” in that moment: “He’s trying to find some reason why he behaves as despicably as he does. I think these things are instinctive, but I’m sure he would instantly regret that kind of viciousness towards Monica because that’s not the deal with them. She’s allowed him to do whatever he needs to do as long as he doesn’t bring it home, and he spoiled the transaction. That’s his fault, and that’s what he can’t quite handle.”

Despite protests from Tony and Archie, Monica insists on driving Declan’s daughter Caitlin (Catriona Chandler), who’s involved with her son, home in the storm. Declan and Rupert, out looking for them, come across a bloody Caitlin on the road. Rupert brings the news to Tony the next morning: Monica’s dead, after a tree fell and hit the car. Lord Baddingham falls to his knees, shocked. It may be harder for him to take than that award to the head from Cameron. The way that David Tennant plays key moments in this episode shows why he’s not just right for this part but also simply a brilliant actor: the scarier side of Tony as he shouts at his family, the utter disbelief as he struggles to accept the news about Monica, and the complete sense of loss as he faces a future without her, both before and after her death.

“It’s a great bit of writing, make it the person that Tony loathes most in the entire world who has to give him this piece of life-shattering information,” Tennant says. “It’s the ultimate twist of the knife.”

That shared loss — Rupert and Monica were friends, as the series reminded us earlier this season — could bring them together… if this were anyone else. “Tony’s wife has died in the arms of his worst enemy, and that makes the situation even more difficult for him to face. So, actually, it makes Rupert and Tony’s past and feud darker, deeper, and it makes Tony want to destroy Rupert even more,” Treadwell-Collins warns.

But it may change the relationship between Tony and his half-brother, Bas (Luca Pasqualino), who is on Venturer’s side. “Tony’s lost his wife, and Bas is human, and Bas is wonderful in dealing with his brother, which makes him more appealing to Taggie,” the EP reveals. A flirtation has started between the two, with Bas becoming more involved in Taggie’s life, much to Rupert’s dismay.

Also part of Tony’s life going forward? His dalliance with Maud. With the correlation between Monica finding out about that and fleeing into the storm and her death, Tony will be thinking his affair “must continue,” Treadwell-Collins teases. “Otherwise, it was all for nothing. How does Maud feel about that as she gets closer to Declan? If Declan ever finds out, there will be fireworks.”

Killing off Monica, which doesn’t happen in the book series, was not something done lightly, Treadwell-Collins stresses. “The Great Storm,” as it was called, hadn’t happened yet when Cooper wrote the book, but she agreed that it had to be included. She also told the producers, “We have to do this,” when they spoke to her about Monica’s death. That’s a sentiment Rushbrook shared when Treadwell-Collins and fellow EP Alexander Lamb took her out to lunch to tell her.

Repercussions are important — from the storm and for Lord Baddingham. “Tony had to pay some penance for what he has done,” Treadwell-Collins explains. “The show is a series of wonderful parties. There needed to be some consequences. Otherwise, the show would become gossamer-thin. It needed a weight to it.”

Matt Stevens

Tony can’t yet process what this means. It leaves his character “adrift” without his “moral touchstone,” Tennant tells us. Being without that stability “is probably quite dangerous for his wellbeing, for his sense of self, for his ability to reset,” he continues. Heading into Season 2 after Cameron hit him with the trophy when they fought about her relationship with Rupert, “the guardrails were really off [for Tony]. There was a carelessness, actually, to him that he was not going to play safe anymore, if he ever did. Now, it feels like there are no limitations left for him.”

Treadwell-Collins agrees. “Tony has lost the person who he loves in his own way. It is his own fault, and he has lost his moral compass. Going forward, he’s lost all his morality. We thought Tony was bad before. He gets even worse, and that ups the stakes for the show,” he reveals of Part 2, coming later this year. Tony’s grief takes him in a new direction, leaving him with a choice to make. “He could think about what happened to Monica and be good Tony, or he could go completely the other way, and I think you can guess which way he’s going to go.”

Love Revealed in the Dark

It has not been an easy path for Cameron when it comes to her heart. Besides her and Tony’s affair, she shared a kiss with Declan’s son, Patrick (Gabriel Tierney), and opened up to him in Season 1. (She pulled away because of her other relationship.) Then, she thought she found love with Rupert, and until now, she was oblivious to the connection her beau and Declan’s daughter, Taggie, have.

Those two circled each other throughout the first season, culminating in a kiss in the finale that left them both seemingly hopeful about their future. But Rupert was still with Cameron at the time, and she turned to him for help after braining Tony. He promised to protect her, and he has, including moving her in (since her home came with her job at Corinium). Rupert and Taggie have continued to dance around each other, and in Rivals Season 2 Episode 6, Cameron has a front-row seat to that. Taggie walks through the storm to bring Rupert’s horse back, and Cameron might as well not be in the sitting room with them as he fusses over the younger woman not wearing a coat before driving her home.

“She knew in that moment that she had lost him,” Williams says. “It was hard to accept because Cameron feels very confident in who she is and how she is with her men, too. So, to see someone like Taggie, younger, who she didn’t really feel like she had to keep an eye out for, it caught her by surprise. It was hard to see them have a softness in their relationship that [Cameron and Rupert] don’t have.”

Courtesy of Disney

That “true love, true connection” is one that Cameron wants, she continues, but “the ambition is so ruthless that that takes precedence.”

Later, with Rupert still at Taggie’s, Cameron finds, in his nightstand drawer, his diary and a card from Taggie reading, “Good luk.” (Taggie’s dyslexic.) That moment further confirms what she realized before. It comes sooner than it did the book. It’s what we see in Nafessa Williams’ performance in these scenes as well, where it’s subtle but clear that she’s clocking everything and thinking at least two steps ahead, like always. Cameron knows how to be in control, and Williams knows how to make sure the audience doesn’t forget that and remains engaged with her character, even as Rupert and Taggie can’t keep their eyes off each other. Moving forward from that will be “tough” for her, according to the star. “She thought maybe she felt love [with Rupert].” Cameron thought she’d be the woman to change him.

It was important to Treadwell-Collins that the show and Williams’ Cameron be “tougher” than the one in the book. “Cameron in the book becomes a dishcloth when she gets with Rupert. We’ve said from the beginning, that’s not our Cameron, it’s not Nafessa’s Cameron. And so we were very clear that we wanted our Cameron to realize exactly what was going on. As you’ll see in the next part, she realizes she needs to extricate herself from this situation,” he previews. “Our Cameron is A-list and ballsy and tough, and she’s been weakened by Rupert, and she realizes that. It’s exciting to see the way Cameron handles it: Is she going to stick around and watch Rupert’s mooning over Taggie, or is she going to get out of the situation?”

This episode also reveals that despite off-the-charts chemistry in Ireland, Cameron and Declan did not sleep together. That’s another change from the book.

“We were really clear that we didn’t want Cameron to just sleep with anyone. And because Declan’s always going to love Maud, we didn’t want Cameron to be his second choice,” Treadwell-Collins clarifies. “We wanted Declan to be maybe the one man who has some sexual morality.”

But that doesn’t mean he’s saying “never” with them. “I love the show Moonlighting, and we talked a lot about Cameron and Declan’s sparky relationship, and I’d like to keep that going,” he says. “They would really like to rip each other’s clothes off because they’re intellectual equals. That’s bubbly and exciting for the audience.”

Matt Stevens

The two have played off each other from their first meeting at Corinium, and that has continued as they work together for Venturer and on his Yeats project. They have a newfound respect for one another, and that has translated into a dynamic that lights up the screen.

Despite the “attraction with their work that they do together,” Williams admits, “I don’t know how it will work. I don’t know if Declan can handle her the way she needs to be handled, but there is a softness on the other side that Patrick brings out of her.”

As she sees it, “Declan and Cameron is really about the professionalism and the ways that they show up, and I think there’s a synergy and the chemistry that they have together in the workspace that maybe make them feel that it could be something more.”

But now, as Cameron faces “a huge rollercoaster ride of emotions,” Williams could see her character leaning on Declan because of the connection they’ve developed. “She feels safe with him to open up.”

And it would never be Tony, given their history. “Cameron’s no fool, and she keeps away from Tony because she knows he’s going to be worse, but she also knows that she’s the last person he’s going to want to see,” Treadwell-Collins explains. “But they will come into each other’s paths again in an interesting way. She goes toe-to-toe with him. Because of what happens with Monica, Tony’s focus becomes elsewhere, whereas Cameron quietly knows how to hit Tony where it hurts.”

The EP says she’ll be focusing her energy on Venturer, but teases, “When things get a little bit sticky, there’s a point that Cameron starts having enough of all the men around her.” With all the drama in their lives, who can blame her?

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