Rivalsstar Katherine Parkinson has said that one scene was so “intimate” that she and co-star Claire Rushbrook “feel like we’ve slept together.
Parkinson, 48, plays the kind, gentle writer Lizzie Vereker in the hit Disney+ series, adapted from a book series by the late Jilly Cooper.
Speaking ahead of the show’s return this month, Parkinson recalled her experience filming an intense conversation in season two’s mid-season finale, which aired earlier this year.
The show may have more sex scenes than many others on TV, but the scene in question was not one of them. In the sequence, Monica Baddingham (Rushbrook), the long-suffering wife of David Tennant’s Tony, talked to Lizzie about their painful marriages and terrible husbands, and the possibility of leaving them.
“Claire and I feel like we’ve slept together, like we’ve had a full intimate moment,” Parkinson claimed.
“We can’t really be around each other now without sort of giggling. I really did enjoy that day very much.”
She also highlighted the scene’s significance, both within the context of the show and within the wider context of the depiction of women’s internal lives on screen.
“To get to do that scene with Claire, and I don’t say this lightly because it sounds really pretentious to say it matters, but I did feel like it was quite an important scene,” said the actor, “because it was not something I’ve seen before.
“And yet so often people’s experience, talking about having the strength to not put up with these bad situations, these bad relationships, I think it’s still relevant from the response that we’ve had for it.
“But also, it felt like a gift to the women of generations gone, our mothers’ generations and our mothers’ mothers’ generations. And a gift to our daughters as well, to say it like it is, which is, ‘You deserve better’. I found it a really profound experience.”
Rivalsreturns with three new episodes on 11 <a href="https://comicvibe.com/ragdoll-playground-codes-<a href="https://comicvibe.com/5-new-netflix-shows-streaming-in-november/” title=”5 new Netflix shows streaming in November”>november-2026/” title=”Ragdoll Playground codes November 2026″>November, with the final three episodes of the season airing weekly afterwards.
This week, series star Bella Maclean revealed that she had inserted a no-nudity clause in her contract before appearing in the show.
The actor, who plays Taggie, the daughter of Aidan Turner’s character in the series, told Harper’s Bazaar: “It was important because of how pure Taggie’s character was. I didn’t want to sexually exploit her, and I didn’t want to do that to myself either.
“That was really important to me, and I think it will stay important to me. There are some things I just want to keep to myself.”
Rivalsreturns on 11 November.
