{"id":592972,"date":"2026-05-19T18:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T18:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592972\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T18:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T18:49:08","slug":"rivals-if-i-could-tell-14-year-old-me-id-be-playing-maud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/592972\/","title":{"rendered":"Rivals: &#8216;If I could tell 14-year-old me I&#8217;d be playing Maud&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Almost in every episode you&#8217;ll get an outrageous ball or polo or something where everyone&#8217;s together, but every character now gets an amazing arch to include the good, the bad and the ugly, which is unheard of really, so it&#8217;s delicious,&#8221; Smurfit said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Her character Maud is a former actress who&#8217;s husband is a journalist-turned-chat show-host hired by Baddingham.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They and their three children, Taggie, Patrick and Caitlin, then move from London to the Cotswolds, much to Maud&#8217;s bemusement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She is depicted as being flirtatious with other men, and described as being &#8220;made of two parts whiskey and one part devilment&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster&#8217;s Evening Extra programme, Smurfit said: &#8220;I think like every decent woman, you should be some part devilment and some part whiskey and it just depends on what level we&#8217;re going to be at.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When asked if she sees any elements of Maud in herself she said: &#8220;I hope I&#8217;m a better mother than her, my kids say I am, and I definitely have to be a better wife than Maud, I mean she&#8217;s desperate. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But I think her kind of bohemian spirit \u2013 I really enjoy getting into that and also Maud&#8217;s vulnerability to excuse her appalling behaviour,&#8221; Smurfit said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Almost in every episode you&#8217;ll get an outrageous ball or polo or something where everyone&#8217;s together, but every&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-592972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}