David Tennant Says Rivals Episode 5 Uses Sex to Reveal Character
David Tennant says rivals episode 5 is built around sex that does more than decorate the frame. Speaking while discussing the series, he said the intimate scenes in Rivals reveal character, and he pointed to the Concorde sequence as the clearest example of how the show uses provocation to define its people.
Tennant on Jilly Cooper
Tennant, who stars as Lord Tony Baddingham, called the character a ruthless TV executive and tied the show’s sexual charge to Jilly Cooper’s writing. “A lot of what Jilly writes is embedded in the British class system and what that means and all the weird intricacies and nuances of that,” he said. “There’s the power that comes with money, but the real power comes with bloodline.”
He also framed the series around access and exclusion, saying, “There are rooms you are simply not allowed into.” That class logic sits inside a series that has already gotten a noticeable promotional push from Disney and airs on Disney+ and Hulu, after a first season that was less visible in America than in the United Kingdom.
Concorde in Bristol
Tennant said the first episode opens with a couple locked in the bathroom of the Concorde, and that part of the shoot happened on the real aircraft. “We filmed on an actual Concorde though, for that sequence,” he said. “They let us go on board and film in it.” The production used a Concorde in a museum in Bristol, a detail that gives the scene a rare bit of physical scale in a show otherwise driven by gossip, status, and maneuvering.
He drew a line between what was real and what was built for the camera: “I don’t think the shagging in the toilet was filmed on the actual original vintage Concorde.” “They built the toilet,” he said. “But the main Concorde bit that was on the actual plane.” He added, “It’s a tiny, pokey little thing.”
Rupert Campbell-Black
That opening scene centers on Rupert Campbell-Black, played by Alex Hassell, and Tennant said it is meant to establish the character’s freedom and promiscuity. “There is quite a lot, yeah,” he said when asked how much sex is on Rivals, before adding, “As Jilly Cooper does in the original novel, I think the sex is always there because it reveals something about character.”
The show’s second season has received fawning reviews, which gives Tennant’s comments extra weight: the sex is not being treated as filler, but as a structural device. For viewers coming in through episode 5, the show is making its case plainly — the intimacy is part of the storytelling machinery, not a distraction from it.
