‘Rivals’ Stars Break Down Declan & Maud’s Bonfire Fight

Who doesn’t love a peek into the scandalous lives of Dame Jilly Cooper‘s characters? Rivals, the series based on her books, returns with the next three episodes of Season 2 on Wednesday, November 11, and they include Monica’s (Claire Rushbrook) funeral — and her final moments alive — a major blow-up between Declan (Aidan Turner) and Maud (Victoria Smurfit), and much more. TV Insider spoke with stars Alex Hassell, Aidan Turner, Victoria Smurfit, Bella Maclean, Danny Dyer, Emily Atack, Lisa McGrillis, Katherine Parkinson, and Luca Pasqualino about those moments. Warning: Spoilers for Rivals Season 2 Episodes 7-9 ahead!

The most shocking moment has to come at the end of Episode 8: Tony (David Tennant), having decided that he and Maud need to continue their affair after Monica’s death, shows up at the O’Haras’ on bonfire night. He even tells her he loves her. But she refuses to let this kill her marriage … until Declan walks in, kicks Tony out, and confronts her. Maud admits to the affair, calling it a mistake and explaining she’d wanted his attention. Tony made her feel special when Declan didn’t and wasn’t there when she needed him, she says. She reminds him that this is far from the first time she slept with someone else, but he never minded before. “Of course I f**king minded!” he shouts. It just leads back to a fight they’ve had before, about him “cheating” with his work. In fact, as she sees it, this one mattered because she “f**ked [his] work.” He accuses her of spying on Venturer for Corinium, but she brushes that off.

Courtesy of Disney

The intensity builds throughout the scene, to Declan asking if Monica knew and that’s why she was driving the night she died. As he cries, Maud holds him and tells him she loves him, but then he asks if she had sex with Tony in their house. She nods. He chases her outside to the party around the bonfire as she yells for help, then grabs her and insists she tell everyone what she did before he does just that, walking off as she’s left on the ground.

Is this something that Declan and Maud can never come back from?

“I don’t know,” Turner tells TV Insider in the video interview above. “This is pretty big for Declan. There’s been infidelities before, and they’ve managed to get through it. This is pretty huge. This is a big transgression. It’s a huge impasse for them, I think, and only time will tell, I suppose, for them. I don’t think Declan has fully processed it yet. I think it’s such a shock for him.”

He admits he’d forgotten how “shocked Declan looked” in that scene. “Every time we did it, you could feel the temperature in the room change. For me, seeing Tony in the kitchen standing in Declan’s and Maud’s kitchen standing so close to Maud, immediately, I was kind of on edge,” he says.

He points out that Maud made “some really good points,” and Smurfit agreed. “To play it? So fun. That’s juicy, juicy, juicy stuff for actors like us. We just loved it.”

It was “completely heartbreaking” and “absolutely harrowing” for Taggie to watch her parents like that, says Maclean. “She’s the sort of glue that keeps that family alive and up and running and together. And also it’s just being Tony. Everything about Tony, she really loathes and to do with Rupert [Hassell], to do with her father, how much he will go to destroy the people he’s threatened by. And I think she’s so, so deeply hurt by her mom, and I think her relationship with her mother is unbelievably complicated. Taggie is so forgiving, and I think this one is really hard. I also think she’s scared. Her father, Declan really lashes out in that moment, and I think Taggie’s never probably seen that side of him before.”

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Declan then comes face-to-face with Tony in Episode 9, interrupting his night with Beattie (Annabel Scholey). Tony says seducing Maud was easy and he didn’t even want her; he just wanted to win. He also informs Declan that Rupert knew. None of that really surprised Declan, according to Turner.

“He would expect nothing less from Tony, and I think the hardest part for Declan in that moment is he believes him, and I do, too,” he explains. “There’s a lot to Tony. He’s got a complex character, but it’s hurtful, but he is the swamp lizard. He’s, to Declan, the worst person on the planet. He’s everything that’s wrong with humanity.”

That confrontation ends with Rupert making sure Tony remembers that his wife died in his arms, broken by his games. As Episode 7 shows, Monica was alive when Rupert found her, and she told him she wanted their destructive rivalry to stop. When Rupert tells that to Tony, the other man refuses, pointing out he now has nothing to do but fight. (Monica also warned Rupert to be careful he didn’t destroy Taggie.)

Rupert is “very worried” about what Tony could do now, Hassell admits, but more so about his friends than himself. “I don’t know what much left Tony could do to Rupert. He’s exposed the worst skeletons in his closet.” That’s why Rupert’s unable to see his kids.

Though Monica’s death has just led to a more ruthless, scheming, and cold and calculating Tony, he does show a more vulnerable side with his half-brother Bas (Pasqualino). He’s the one who sits with Tony after the man clears his home following Monica’s funeral by waving a rifle around and warning everyone to get out, or he’ll use it after his son Archie (Louis Landau) leaves with his aunt.

“As much as they disagree on things and they don’t see eye to eye about a lot of things, I think Bas, at his core, does love Tony, and I think he does understand that Tony’s not the kind of person that you can fight fire with fire,” Pasqualino tells us.

Courtesy of Disney

Also in these first three episodes of Rivals Season 2 Part 2, Paul (Rufus Jones) thinks that Sarah’s (Atack) baby is James’ (Oliver Chris) and punches him, calling him a “bottle-blond giraffe.” Sarah then tells him it’s Tony’s.

“She sees Paul really breaking down. He’s really broken, and they’re both broken by it,” Atack explains. “You have to remember as well, she is pregnant. She’s so hormonal, and I think she feels safe to tell him in a way. It’s something she really wants to get off her chest, and he’s so vulnerable in that moment. And for once, she’s not trying to wind him up. She’s not grossed out by him. I think she really loves him in that moment. She has to almost hurt him the most he could ever be hurt by telling him.”

Plus, Freddie (Dyer) and Lizzie’s (Parkinson) affair continues while his wife Valerie (McGrillis) starts feeling amorous; Gerald (Hubert Burton) tells Muffy (Eliot Salt) he’s gay, and she tells him he has to give up Charles (Gary Lamont); Venturer knows they have a mole; Cameron (Nafessa Williams) leaves Rupert and the U.K., but he and Declan go to America and convince her to come back for the IBA pitch; Taggie and Bas kiss; and Tony blackmails Reverend Penny (David Calder), threatening to bring evidence of him raping Daysee (Lara Peake) to the police if Corinium doesn’t win the franchise.

Watch the full video above for more from Alex Hassell, Aidan Turner, Victoria Smurfit, Bella Maclean, Danny Dyer, Emily Atack, Lisa McGrillis, Katherine Parkinson, and Luca Pasqualino about these three episodes.

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