Queen Camilla traded palace corridors for studio gantries on Monday as she toured the Bristol set of Rivals, the glossy 1980s television drama devised by Dame Jilly Cooper that has become one of Disney+’s most successful British productions.
The Queen spent several hours moving between sound stages, costume workrooms and editing suites, observing filming for the show’s second series and meeting the actors bringing Dame Jilly Cooper’s exuberant characters to life. The visit – her first to the production – underscored both the scale of the streaming giant’s investment in the South West and Camilla’s long-standing friendship with the author whose novels inspired the series.
Producers outlined how the drama has helped nurture a new regional workforce, with trainees from local colleges now embedded across departments. Executives spoke of a surge in skilled jobs, from set building to post-production, that has followed the arrival of the drama’s Bristol base.
One senior crew member said: “It has been transformative for young people who might otherwise have left the region,”
At the centre of the production is David Tennant’s scheming television boss, Lord Tony Baddingham, whose fictional empire, Corinium, will be pushed to fresh extremes with the show’s expanded twelve-episode run due in 2026. Alex Hassell returns as Rupert Campbell-Black – Cooper’s notorious show-jumping heart-breaker – alongside Bella Maclean as Taggie O’Hara.
Camilla’s visit inevitably carried a note of poignancy. Dame Jilly, who died in October aged 88 after a fall at her Gloucestershire home, had counted the Queen among her closest friends. At a literary festival weeks before the author’s death, Camilla recalled her friend’s irrepressible humour, quoting an evening at Cliveden when Cooper declared she intended to get “absolutely plastered” out of sheer affection for her hosts. The remark was met, as it had been then, with appreciative laughter.
The Queen later described the author as “a legend” and “a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend” – praise echoed by cast members yesterday as they greeted members of Cooper’s family, also invited on set for the occasion. Several noted the author’s delight at seeing her fictional world reinvented for the screen, not least the flamboyant Campbell-Black, whom Cooper once admitted was partly modelled on Camilla’s former husband, Andrew Parker Bowles.
In the wardrobe department, rails of sharply tailored jackets, silk blouses and oversized shoulder pads evoked the period in which the novels are set – an age of ambition, excess and permanently raised stakes in Britain’s burgeoning commercial television sector. Costume designers explained how they had rebuilt the aesthetic of early-Eighties broadcasting, from the leather-bound boardrooms of Baddingham’s network to the high-gloss glamour of its on-air talent.
Rivals premiered in October 2024 and swiftly became the platform’s most successful UK general entertainment launch. Its run of awards – including an International Emmy 0 cemented it as a flagship British export at a time when high-end domestic productions are competing fiercely for global audiences.
For Camilla, the visit served as both a tribute and a celebration: a chance to acknowledge a friend’s legacy while witnessing the creative industry she so often champions at full tilt. As she departed the set, one crew member remarked that the Queen had shown “genuine curiosity about every detail”.
“Dame Jilly would have adored that,” he added.
