‘Rivals’ Star David Tennant and Producer Felicity Blunt on Making the Sex-Soaked, Occasionally ‘Uncomfortable’ Jilly Cooper Adaptation: ‘It’s Like a Naughty Bridget Jones’

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Rivals,” now streaming on Hulu/Disney+. British author Jilly Cooper is synonymous with sex.

In the U.K., the 87-year-old has long reigned as the queen of “bonkbusters” (a.k.a. romance novels), with titles like “Riders” and “Tackle” usually accompanied by saucy jacket covers (one edition of “Riders” features a woman in tight-fitting horse-riding pants with a man’s hand placed provocatively on her posterior.) “She’s a writer with a reputation within the United Kingdom,” says Felicity Blunt, Cooper’s longtime literary agent at Curtis Brown (part of UTA). “But I would say you should never judge a book by a cover.” That much is evident in an expensive and expansive new TV adaptation of one of her most famous books, “Rivals,” which took the U.K.

by storm when it was released on Disney+ last month and is now catching on in the U.S., where it’s available on Hulu. While Cooper’s novels are best known for their explicit content (“It’s like a naughty Bridget Jones,” is how Blunt describes “Rivals”), devoted fans turn to her for much more. “She talks about misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia; that’s been throughout her books from the very, very beginning,” says Blunt. “She was never preaching to you, she was just making you feel uncomfortable, and then you would take away your feelings about it.

And I think that is the genius of her writing.” David Tennant, who plays Lord Tony Baddingham in the show, is among those who was only aware of Cooper via her reputation before reading the scripts for “Rivals.” (It was his wife Georgia who persuaded the actor to take on the role of menacing TV network owner Tony.) “There probably is, or was, a snobbishness towards Jilly’s.