{"id":445198,"date":"2026-05-12T16:13:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/445198\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T16:13:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:13:14","slug":"victoria-smurfit-on-bringing-the-irish-touch-to-the-new-season-of-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/445198\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Smurfit on bringing the Irish touch to the new season of Rivals\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scandal is bigger, the shoulder pads are sharper, and the sex is even more outrageous \u2014 but beneath the champagne-drenched chaos of Rivals season two runs something far deeper: heartbreak, ambition, insecurity, and an aching need to be loved.<\/p>\n

At the centre of the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper\u2019s salacious novel is the O\u2019Hara family: Irish bohemians who find themselves, almost inevitably, at the heart of everyone\u2019s attention. With Victoria Smurfit back in action as the wildly dramatic actor Maud O\u2019Hara, she says, despite their issues, Maud\u2019s relationship with her broadcaster husband Declan, played by Aidan Turner, is the most straightforward of any of the show\u2019s couples.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the Irish bohemian element to that, which is: we don\u2019t want to be anybody other than ourselves, because we\u2019re fabulous. They are deeply in love with each other. They just have days when they don\u2019t like each other. There\u2019s that power struggle of who\u2019s the star, who\u2019s in the spotlight, how long can Maud stay out of the spotlight? I think they\u2019re very honest in how they operate. They\u2019re shoot-from-the-hip kind of people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"VictoriaVictoria Smurfit and Aidan Turner in Rivals, returning to Disney+ for a second season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smurfit notes having Irish actors play Irish characters enables a natural rapport and shared understanding between herself and Turner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a common language, and a trust that is pretty phenomenal. It doesn\u2019t really matter how extraordinary a situation the writers might put Aidan or myself in; we will probably not discuss it, and we\u2019ll just go in and do whatever it is. We really want the stuff to be good, but there\u2019s such a trust level. It\u2019s like we just go into a room and we just go kaboom and then go for a cup of tea and fight over the custard creams.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s creator and writer, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, was born in England, but his father is from Skibbereen. Smurfit describes Treadwell-Collins as sounding English but being Irish, and as someone who understands what it means to be Irish in the upper-class world of Rivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it gives him an interesting perspective on the British class system, how they operate amongst each other, with each other and against each other. It\u2019s almost like the British class system is all about subtext, whereas the Irish is all about the text. Whatever we say, it is very clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\" Lisa McGrillis in Rivals on Disney+.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lisa McGrillis plays Valerie Jones, wife of the downtrodden tech mogul Fred, played by Danny Dyer. Valerie is by far the funniest character in the show, but she is more than just comic relief, as McGrillis explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are approaching a character like Valerie, you have got to understand why they are the way they are. I need to find her vulnerability. I need to understand why she behaves the way she does. Jilly writes these beautiful characters and addresses the class system. Valerie is a social climber, but she\u2019s not from the same world as these people. It doesn\u2019t matter what she does. It doesn\u2019t matter that she has the biggest house or the most expensive clothes \u2014 all of that goes for nothing. She just does not fit in, and people laugh at her.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show may be bursting with outrageous behaviour and gregarious characters, but its smart dialogue and strong emotional core mean it is far more than throwaway television. McGrillis credits Treadwell-Collins and lead writer Laura Wade for their intelligent approach to the material.<\/p>\n

\u201cLaura writes for the stage. Episode two of the new season, for example, is like watching a theatrical farce. When the quality of the writing is as good as this, it is a gift. If you can learn the lines quickly, the writing is really good, and this is phenomenal. What they have done in this season is huge. The journeys different characters go on are surprising. Every episode sort of feels like it\u2019s the finale but then\u2026 [there\u2019s more].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smurfit agrees the team behind the show have done a stellar job adapting Cooper\u2019s novel, using outrageous behaviour to mask the characters\u2019 deeper emotional pain.<\/p>\n

\"VictoriaVictoria Smurfit in Rivals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it teeters on the edge of being almost too sweet or too fun, it plunges you into emotion and vulnerability. Every single character is fighting and hiding their insecurities. They\u2019re all so raw, but every character has a different way of masking their imposter syndrome, their fear of love, their fear of not having love, their fear of being alone, their fear of being ignored or being irrelevant. It\u2019s how they build those characters and those storylines so that you\u2019re always peeling away, and then just when you\u2019re going to peel away so far you can\u2019t handle it, it\u2019s covered in a smorgasbord of colour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether people admit it or not, most Irish households have a copy of a Jilly Cooper novel, with the more steamy pages dog-eared from rereading. Smurfit is no exception and recalls \u201cborrowing\u201d her mother\u2019s copy of Rivals.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cI still have the original. My mum had it. I remember we had just moved to England, to Surrey, and I\u2019d hear her guffawing with laughter. So of course I\u2019m like, \u2018What is she reading?\u2019 When she was distracted, making dinner or whatever, I\u2019d steal the book. Then she’d be going to bed, and I would hear “where’s my book?'”<\/p>\n

\n Rivals was not just Smurfit\u2019s sex education; it was also her guide to being Irish in Surrey. \u201cI was suddenly going to a very well-to-do all-girls school and encountering all these wonderful British types. We were the mad Irish family. I remember there was a You magazine article back in 1988 or \u201989 about the village we\u2019d moved into, interviewing the locals. Sheikh somebody had moved in, and the magazine interviewer asked, \u2018Are you alright with all that?\u2019 The local lady said, \u2018Oh yes, we\u2019re terribly welcoming here. We even have the Irish.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the Bridgerton cast often talking about banning family members from watching their more steamy scenes, has Smurfit attempted to dissuade her family from watching Maud O\u2019Hara\u2019s bedroom antics?<\/p>\n

\u201c Bridgerton hasn\u2019t even started on the dirty bits! We could teach them. But no, I\u2019m in my \u2018fuck it\u2019 years now. My son is never going to watch it, that\u2019s his decision, and he\u2019s totally right. My daughters love it. They don\u2019t even comment on it. My dad only really watches sports or detective shows. With the best will and love in the world, it wouldn\u2019t really be his jam. But my cousins all love it. It\u2019s just part of the job. They would probably find it more awkward watching me cry with feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Season two marks Maud\u2019s return to the stage, mirroring how Rivals has also drawn Smurfit back into theatre since the first season. She notes the uncanny similarities between her own acting career and Maud\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is mad. In Rivals, Maud returns to performing an Ibsen play, playing the maid, and in real life, I got to do an adaptation of Ibsen\u2019s Ghosts at the Lyric in Hammersmith. It was amazing. I hadn\u2019t been on stage for 17 years because I couldn\u2019t afford to \u2014 I was raising three kids. You had to go and get the job that paid. It was such a bonkers coincidence, but also a very exhausting but satisfying job. Amazing, but weird. Terrifying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rivals season 2 streams on Disney+ from Friday May 15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scandal is bigger, the shoulder pads are sharper, and the sex is even more outrageous \u2014 but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6405],"class_list":["post-445198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music-movies-reviews-munster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}