‘Rivals’ Boss Teases What to Expect From Monica’s Funeral When Season 2 Returns

When Rivals returns in November, it will be mourning a beloved character. The dramatic series made a great departure from the Jilly Cooper book series on which it’s based when it killed off Monica Baddingham (Claire Rushbrook) halfway through Season 2. The midseason finale ended with her husband, Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), learning of her death from his rival, former MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell). Read TV Insider’s digital cover story with Tennant and Nafessa Williams for a deep dive into that episode.

Rivals Season 2 is split into two parts. The first six episodes are now out, and the second half will debut in November. When the series returns, there will be a “small time jump,” executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins tells us.

“We wanted to make sure we mourn Monica as a show, but tonally, we’ve had to make sure that we’re still Rivals,” he explains. “So, Tony gets deeper and darker. Cameron takes some interesting turns. The rivalries step up. There’s a sorrow about Monica in the second half, but that only elevates the rivalries and we’ve also been made sure that there’s still fun.”

Part of the grief of that heartbreaking loss will come in the form of showing Monica’s funeral. The Season 2 Part 2 trailer seems to offer a glimpse of it.

Courtesy of Disney

“We see parties in Rivals, and you are going to see how Rivals does a funeral,” Treadwell-Collins says, calling it “a big British funeral that will not go the way anyone expects.”

Expect “everyone” to have trouble setting aside their differences. “As we do with Rivals, we always play lots of different parties and social events where we cross all the characters and play out everyone’s stories and we use the funeral to do that as well,” he continues. “We talked a lot about making sure it’s not weighty and depressing, but that also we honor Monica as well.”

The fight for the TV franchise, between Tony’s Corinium and Venturer, led by Declan (Aidan Turner), Rupert, Freddie (Danny Dyer), and Cameron (Williams), wasn’t part of the midseason finale. Rather, the episode took place over the course of one night, when a hurricane hit, and when Monica went out in the storm after learning about Tony’s affair with Declan’s wife Maud, she was killed when a tree fell on her car. That storm really happened in 1987, which was after Cooper wrote the book.

“We talked to Jilly about the storm, and she said we had to include it. And then we talked about an episode set in the storm, but we also said there needed to be repercussions of the storm,” Treadwell-Collins explains. “It wasn’t something we did lightly. We talked to Jilly about it at length. Jilly actually said, ‘No, we have to do this.’ Jilly agreed and believed in it. Jilly signed off the scripts. We talked to Claire about it. Alex [Lamb] and I took Claire out for lunch and talked to her about the decision and what it meant. We gave Claire a couple of days to think about it and talked to her about it again. She said, ‘No, you’ve got to do this.’ Because also it’s given Monica the most incredible story. In Episode 6, Claire Rushbrook is one of our finest actresses and finest people on and off screen.”

He continues, “The next thing was there had to be consequences of Tony’s actions. Tony had to pay some penance for what he has done. And also we talked about the show is a series of wonderful parties. And as the show was going on, we’re having these wonderful parties and celebrations and insights into life and then suddenly, there needed to be some consequences. Otherwise, the show would become gossamer-thin and fly away and feel like a series of silliness. The show needed a weight to it as well.”

The second half of the season is going to introduce Rachael Sterling as Araminta Pemberton, Lady Monica Baddingham’s vampish younger sister, and we expect there to be some drama when it comes to her at the funeral. It should also be interesting to see Dame Enid Spink’s (Selina Griffiths) reaction at the funeral, given the hints at their romance which became part of the later books in Cooper’s series. In one of Monica’s last conversations, with Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson), she mentions loving someone she wasn’t allowed to.

“Fans of the book know that Monica doesn’t really appear much in later books, but you hear that she and Enid are a couple. And so we thought we’ve got to play that on screen,” shares Treadwell-Collins. “Because Monica at the moment would never have done anything with Enid, but we had to promise that she had these feelings she was bottling up. And that was really, really important to us to show there was another side to Monica. I think our Monica, and Claire Rushbrook’s Monica, is a so much more multifaceted character than the Monica that was in the book.”

What are you hoping to see with Monica’s funeral when Rivals returns? Let us know in the comments section below.

Rivals, Season 2 Part 2 Premiere, November 2026, Hulu