Emily Atack has said the new series of Rivals, based on the best-selling novel by Dame Jilly Cooper, is “a love letter” to the late author.
The award-winning Disney+ show follows the high-stakes world of British television with the backdrop of the Cotswolds countryside.
Atack, who plays the raunchy Sarah Stratton in the series, told the Press Association at the premiere of the hit show’s second series, that when Dame Jilly died unexpectedly aged 88 last October part-way through shooting that it was “kind of bizarre”.
The novelist had been an executive producer on the show.
“All we want to do is make her and her family proud and it’s a love letter to Jilly this,” Atack said on the Rivals’ pink carpet at the BFI Imax on Wednesday.
“Losing her halfway through the shoot, it was really kind of bizarre and it just gives the show a whole new layer of love and sentiment to it.”
Set in the 1980s, Rivals – which also stars David Tennant, Aidan Turner and Alex Hassell – shows how careers, marriages and reputations hang by a thread when professional and personal lives collide.
Rufus Jones, who plays Atack’s husband Paul – an MP going through a mid-life crisis, said Dame Jilly was “so involved” in the show that she got to see some of the second series.
“She saw some of the assemblies and some of the episodes, you know, the rough episodes, so she got to see something,” Jones said.
Atack said Dame Jilly was “nothing but complimentary and happy” when she saw the episodes.
“Proper supportive on the ground producer, you forgot she was this dame of the realm,” Jones said.
“You know, she was a mate by the end of it. It’s still a big loss.”
Atack, known for playing Charlotte Hinchcliffe on The Inbetweeners, said characters like Sarah Stratton, Paul’s second wife and former mistress, have “always been written in such a one-dimensional way”.
“I think now down to the amazing writing by Dominic (Treadwell-Collins) and Laura (Wade) and the other writers they’ve really captured a woman like her and given her nuance and shown that we can really celebrate these flawed women and understand, not condone them and their crazy behaviours, but kind of learn to understand them a little bit more, rather than just vilify them,” Atack said.
The 36-year-old said it had been her “dream” to “take that typecast and kind of flip it on its head”.
She said: “To show people that these women are real and they have a story, and they have a background, and there’s a reason why they’re going around making all these awful mistakes, often to do with their love life.”
The second series of Rivals will return to Disney+ on May 15.
