Aidan Turner Pushes Back on ‘Smouldering’ — SkimNews
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- Aidan Turner said he is weary of the “smoulder” label and grew a full beard to avoid being read that way, aiming to look like a “dad”; at 43 and with a young son, he now also declines suggestive photo poses.
- Rivals shaved Turner’s full beard down to a moustache after he rejected a stick-on prosthetic; he says the moustache gives Declan more age and gravitas, supported by a Westmeath accent borrowed from his father.
- Rivals opens the new episodes with a funeral, reaches a sex scene within 15 minutes and puts Declan and Maud’s marriage under strain, with Turner describing the season-two story as “a big one.”
- Aidan Turner says the show’s intimacy coordinators are a clear improvement over directors who left actors to negotiate sex scenes themselves; he says they help choreograph Rivals’ many different types of sex.
- Jilly Cooper was heavily involved in season one and died suddenly at 88 during the season-two shoot; Turner had seen her at a party five weeks before her death, and she had visited the set and was proud of the adaptation.
- Poldark made Turner a household name after Ross’s sex scenes and the topless scything image Turner proposed; the photograph resurfaced for roughly 10 years, and the unwanted attention made him avoid overtly sexy roles until Rivals.
- Rivals appeals across age groups, and Turner says people in their 20s have begun approaching him in the street, a change he attributes to the show’s unapologetic tone and Cooper’s writing.
Why it matters: Jilly Cooper was 88 when she died during Rivals’ second-season shoot, five weeks after Turner had seen her at a champagne-filled Cotswolds party. She had also visited the set and was proud of the adaptation; because the cast was already filming funeral scenes, her real-life death gave the season’s grim opening an unexpectedly direct personal resonance.
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