David Tennant has revealed Rivals created a fake television award for a major scene amid branding concerns about the use of a BAFTA award.
The actor, 55, plays ruthless television boss Lord Baddingham in the award-winning Disney+ show set in the Cotswolds countryside.
During the series one final, his character was hit over the head with an award - which Tennant revealed was not a real BAFTA but a “national something” prize due to fears over branding.
“At the end of the last series I was left on the floor of my office in a pool of blood having been whacked over the head with a television award,” Tennant said on Capital Breakfast while promoting the show’s second series.
“Not a BAFTA because they wouldn’t let us use a real BAFTA. They were worried about the branding!
“So, we had to make one up. I got knocked over the head with a national something award.”
He added: “But yes, it’s not too much of a spoiler now to reveal that I do escape from hospital quite early on in episode one. But I’m incapacitated for a while.”
The Doctor Who star added that filming Rivals doesn’t feel like work.
“We do have an unseemly amount of fun filming Rivals though, it has to be said!” he said.
“It’s really hard to call it going to work because of the people like Emily [Atack], Danny [Dyer], Alex [Hassell] and Katherine [Parkinson].
“It’s such a great bunch of people! And everyone’s got really fun characters to play so everyone is having a good time.”
Tennant dropped into Capital Studios the morning after attending the series two premiere in London with his cast members on Wednesday evening.
Speaking at the premiere, his co-star Atack said that the show, which is based on the best-selling novel by Dame Jilly Cooper, is “a love letter” to the late author.
She told the Press Association it was “kind of bizarre” when Dame Jilly died unexpectedly aged 88 last October part-way through shooting.
The novelist had been an executive producer on the show and the cast previously said her death “really knocked” them.
“All we want to do is make her and her family proud and it’s a love letter to Jilly, this,” Atack said.
“Losing her halfway through the shoot, it was really kind of bizarre and it just gives the show a whole new layer of love and sentiment to it.”
Set in the 1980s, Rivals shows how careers, marriages and reputations hang by a thread when professional and personal lives collide.
