One of the stars of a British TV show currently in production has boasted that the set is so sexy, bosses have drafted in not one but two intimacy coordinators.
Aidan Turner – star of The Hobbit films and the title role in hit BBC drama Poldark – told The Times newspaper that filming the drama Rivals for Disney+ is the most fun he’s had in his two-decade acting career.
He said: “We have so much sex on our show, we have to have two intimacy coaches. Two!”
Rivals is based on the 1988 bestselling romp-novel by Jilly Cooper of the same name – the second in her hit Rutshire Chronicles books, chronicling the 1980s excess of the lives and many loves of well-to-do characters on the polo fields and in the television studios of the picturesque Cotswolds, in the west of England. Besides Turner, the series stars David Tennant, Katherine Parkinson, Lisa McGrillis, Alex Hassell, Emily Atack and Danny Dyer.
Turner told The Times:
“Every day we’re in a different huge manor house somewhere, having garden parties. And it is that thing as well, which happens sometimes in shows — and I see it happening [here], though none of us have kind of admitted to it, but it’s definitely there — where there’s a slight methody thing happening. We’re all up for the party. We went out the other night to the Ivy. We had a late night, lots of cocktails.
“Never wanted a season two of anything more in my life.”
Turner is shortly to appear in Amazon Prime drama 15-0 in which he plays a tennis coach accused of sexual misconduct after an inappropriate relationship with his teenage female star player. He said of the lines between good and bad behaviour, “it’s very blurry… It felt important not to play him (his character Glenn) as that villain, you know? He is charismatic, approachable, supportive and talented. Married. A father.”