If there is one thing that was never part of the original plan for Disney+ – at least for those who believe Disney to produce nothing but jolly, child-safe animated movies and the like – it was a raunchy bonk-busting adaptation of a Jilly Cooper novel starring the likes of David Tennant, Danny Dyer, Aiden Turner, and Nafessa Williams among others. But it happened, and Rivals bonked all over the Disney+ chart when it released its first season, so it is only right that it is returning for Season 2 and bringing some new stars to the party. According to Deadline, two new names that have just been added to the cast are the ever-British pair Rupert Everett and MCU favorite/Mission: Impossible star, Hayley Atwell. Atwell, who is still also rumored to be returning to her Marvel role of Agent Carter/Captain Carter in the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars, will play Helen Gordon, the ex-wife of Rupert Campbell-Black and mother of his children; Everett steps in as Malise Gordon, Helen’s current husband and Campbell-Black’s former show-jumping coach and mentor. The pair join several newly announced guest stars, including Maxim Ays, Holly Cattle, Oliver Dench, Amanda Lawrence, Bobby Lockwood, Eliot Salt and Jonny Weldon. Rivals Season 2 has not only been given its second season, but that new run of episodes is also being given the luxury of expanding its length (oo-er, missus) to 12 episodes from Season 1’s eight, meaning that this time around there will be even more 1980s upper-crust scandal to get everyone talking.
‘Rivals’ Was an Instant Hit on Hulu & Disney+

Nafessa Williams walking in Rivals
Disney+

Rivals became the latest unexpected project to come from Disney, as anyone who is familiar with Jilly Cooper’s novels – very much like a posh, British version of Jackie Collins’ work but with more humor and, well, Britishness – would think they were perhaps too raunchy for the sweet and innocent Disney executives to take. However, the racy series’ explicit moments and foul language remained intact for the adaptation, and the show became a hilariously debaucherous affair in 2024. Rivals, part of Cooper’s “Rutshire Chronicles,” focuses primarily on the sociopolitical competitive antics of politician Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and TV director Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), which become increasingly crude, and deprived of morals as the story progresses. That is mainly the reason why Rivals became the runaway success it did. Rather than attempting to modernize the world Cooper wrote about in 1988, the adaptation completely embraces it, allowing many ways to be excessive and politically incorrect. As David Tennant said of the series:
“In the Jilly Cooper-verse you can be both things. You can be terrible, treacherous, traitorous – having an infidelity with your top producer – and you can be in a very stable marriage. That’s how it works. It’s not the 1980s that I remember – it wasn’t like that in Bathgate [near Glasgow] in the 80s – but apparently it was in the Cotswolds. There was a lot of hair and there was a lot of sex.”
Now it looks like the British end will be kept up a bit longer with plenty of new blood coming to offer themselves up to the bawdiness as only true Brits can.