If you’ve streamed the first three episodes of Rivals Season 2, then you know about Sarah Stratton’s unforgettable dinner party. It’s one of the many things I had to ask Emily Atack, who plays the gloriously chaotic Sarah Stratton, and Oliver Chris, who plays the always-camera-ready James Vereker, about in our exclusive interview ahead of the season’s launch. Atack kicked off the conversation by sharing what it was like to come back to the show: “We love being together. We love hanging out together. We love working together.”
“It’s just, we’re so lucky. So as soon as Season 2 was on the cards, the first initial thing is, yeah, we get to hang out and all be together again at the mad hotel in Bristol, and having a lovely time.” Chris added that a second season meant getting to “live in Jilly Cooper world again.” Atack called it “a great world to be in.”
As for that ambitious, impressive, and outrageous kitchen scene, Atack cited it as “one of my proudest things I’ve ever done.” She tried to pivot the praise to everyone else, saying that the whole cast “is so amazing in it.” But Chris was quick to make sure that Atack accepted her flowers, saying, “Yeah, but it revolves around you. You held that scene together.” Again, Atack described the scene as a group effort where “you all carry me through it.”
MORE: Alex Hassell and Bella Maclean Share Why Rupert and Taggie’s Romance Is Worth It in Rivals Season 2
She also called the production of the scene “a very unique way of working. We do it all in one take.” About which, Atack and Chris commended Rivals’ crew for their “incredible” work. Namely, Atack shouted out Justin Theodore, an aco camera and steadicam operator on the show, for his camera work. “I’ve never seen a team come together so much and just really, really smash it out the park and just take something that is so complicated and that should be impossible on paper and just make it possible and make it magic,” Atack shared.
Chris also complimented Sarah’s “epic” emotional journey in the scene. That’s when Atack revealed that Sarah’s breakdown, which is one of my favorite parts of the whole thing, at the end of the show-stopping sequence “wasn’t written in the script.”
She explained, “I just cried…because I was so exhausted and so kind of high on adrenaline, and I just wanted to get it right. And it was, you know, stressful.” Oliver Chris joked that “Nothing gets you in the feels like a tray full of salmon mousse,” which led to another excellent behind-the-scenes story about this Rivals Season 2 scene.
“Oh, yeah. Well, I had a fall. I had a fall in one of the rehearsals,” Atack shared. “I was holding a tray of like 20 salmon mousse plates. And after one of the rehearsals, I sort of did a little hair flick around. I walked off, and I went flat on my face, and I was covered head to toe in salmon mousse. So even though it was a really wonderful moment in my career, it was also one of the most embarrassing moments.”
MORE: Rivals Executive Producers Dominic Treadwell-Collins and Alexander Lamb Discuss ‘Big Emotion’ and New Characters in Season 2
It truly is incredible work from everyone involved, especially Atack, who does hold it all together. The scene just keeps building on itself, with more characters and more moving parts. So, even though it’s not scripted, Sarah’s breakdown makes total sense. That moment of release is almost necessary by the end. Atack spoke to all of that in our conversation. Sarah’s “pregnant, and all these people are just being cruel to her,” she opened up.
“Like, Tony Baddingham’s threatening to take her job away, and she’s just trying to literally spin all these plates and build a home for the baby, and make sure that nobody breaks up her relationship with Paul because that’s really important now for the child. And she’s just trying so hard. And…she’s hormonal, you know? She’s, yeah, probably got morning sickness,” Atack continued.
Chris spoke about the nuances of it all, calling it “an extraordinary…comic scene.” It’s also “so quintessentially Rivals that you can have what is effectively like a 10-minute fast set piece, but where the heart of it is a kind of hideous man saying you abort this child or I’m going to fire you.”
The show – that scene – threads the needle of all of these big feelings and themes so well. Chris spoke to the “pressure of that” and the sequence’s “sweet, salty, sour flavor,” creating a “high-contrast flavor.” He added, “I mean, that’s kind of what the show is all about, you know?” As Atack noted, “It goes from hilarious to dark really, really quickly.” Chris added that the scene spanned shock, comedy, and vulnerability “so fast.”
MORE: Rivals Season 2, Episode 3 Review: Uncensored Discoveries on Election Day
So, after all the work that Emily Atack, Oliver Chris, and the whole Rivals cast and crew put into that amazing scene and the season as a whole, what would they hope that fans would take away from it all?
It’s all about Dame Jilly Cooper, who wrote Rivals and the rest of the bestselling Rutshire Chronicles and sadly passed away last October. “Well, we lost Jilly in the middle of making Season 2, and I really want Jilly to be proud, and I want people who love Jilly, all her fans, and everybody,” Atack generously shared.
“I mean, anyone that knew her, even people who didn’t know her, loved her. And I want people to really hope that we have done her proud,” Atack continued. She described the show as “a love letter to Jilly,” to which Oliver Chris agreed. “And it’s so important to get right, even more so now than ever. And we want her family to be proud,” Atack explained.
She even shared how their loss gave the show a slightly new lens during production. “I think that for us, Jilly passing away has just given it this whole layer of love attached to it. And just when we didn’t think it could get more kind of sentimental for us with this amazing show, but it has now. It’s all the more emotional, and we want to make her and her family proud.” I’m with Chris, who perfectly closed out our conversation by saying, “I can’t top that.”
MORE: Rivals Season 2, Episode 1 Review: Playing Games with the Heart
—
