Rivals' stars Aidan Turner, Bella Maclean and Alex Hassell support author Jilly Cooper as she wins Harper's Bazaar's writer award

The Rivals' cast threw their support behind author Jilly Cooper at the 2024 Harper's Bazaar Women Of The Year Awards in London on Tuesday. 

Aidan Turner, Bella Maclean and Alex Hassell proudly posed for photos backstage at Claridges Hotel after Dame Jilly, 87, won the writer award. 

The Disney+ series, which is an adaption of a 1988 novel of the same name, follows the lives and loves of two fierce rivals and has seen rave reviews from critics.     

During a night which celebrated Britain's biggest female stars and their respective contributions to the arts, Jilly scooped the prize for 'her extraordinary half-century contribution to literature' which was presented by Aidan. 

The author wore a black satin slip dress teamed with a sheer, ruffled jacket and a classic pearl necklace for the event. 

Aidan, who stars as Declan O'Hara in the eight-part series, looked smart in a black velvet suit 

The actor recently told of how he threw himself into his racy scenes with friend and co-star Victoria Smurfit, who plays his wife Maud. 

Rivals has its fair share of raunch-packed scenes, with husband and wife Declan and Victoria also baring all. 

But speaking to The Sunday Times, Aidan revealed that both he and Victoria had no qualms about the intimacy. 'Victoria is such a legend, she's a pal, I love her,' he said. 

'We didn't care, we just got straight involved,' Aidan added, as he admitted Victoria wasn't aware there were even going to be intimacy coordinators until the pair arrived on set. 

The Poldark star said: 'It's technical but you do have to have a sense of fun about it as well, it can't just be laborious. 

'It's like a dance. There are 50 hairy men hanging around with cameras.'

His admission comes after it was revealed that younger writers on Rivals had rallied for the groping scene to be removed from the eight-part Disney adaptation.

It was a scene in Rivals that made viewers' blood run cold when Dame Jilly Cooper's dark-haired lothario Rupert Campbell Black put his hand up 19-year-old Taggie's skirt. 

Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the show's executive producer and writer, said: 'We talked a lot about the groping scene between Taggie and Rupert and whether we could show that on screen and, yes, we sat in the writer's room and wriggled that out.

'Some of the younger writers said, 'You can't keep that in because we would never want Rupert and Taggie to get together if he has groped her.'

'And we said well he's got to change, that's got to stay in, it's a comment on the 80s and these men.'

Rivals has since been widely praised for its loyal adaptation to Dame Jilly's original storyline, not shying away from the more uncomfortable truths of the pre-MeToo 1980s.