Rivals actress Emily Atack reveals her surprising answer when she was told the series would mean nudity

Actress Emily Atack has revealed her response when she was told that appearing in the new Disney+ series Rivals would mean a lot of nudity. The 34 year old is appearing in the raunchy adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s racy novel Rivals, where she actress makes a bold entrance in the series, appearing fully nude during a tennis match.

The action-packed series kicks off with characters joining the mile-high club on a plane, followed soon after by Emily’s attention-grabbing scene, and it all happens in the first 25 minutes of the glamorous drama. She appeared on ITV’s Loose Women today, and describing the first time she read the script, Emily said: “I read the script and obviously they said, ‘There’s going to be lots of nudity, are you going to be up for this?’. I was like, ‘Disney, there was no way on earth that you are going to get me playing tennis...’. That’s what I was worried about!”

She added: “It was honestly the best job I’ve ever done in my life. The cast were amazing. People say, ‘Don’t meet your heroes’. I met every single one of them, and they’re all my friends now, and they are just amazing.” During the show, Emily also discussed a documentary she made last year, ‘Emily Atack: Asking for it?’ and her campaigning around online sexual harassment.

She explained: “It’s so funny isn’t it because people kind of go, ‘Well hang on, you need to pick a lane. You can’t be somebody that does this and plays these kinds of roles but also campaigns [about] sexual violence against women’ - and it’s like people think you can’t do both.”

She continued: “I’m really trying to hammer this message home that, ‘Yes, you can’. I’m exactly where I need to be at work, in a professional environment. Obviously, in the past, it wasn’t always that way, but we have intimacy coordinators. It’s heavily choreographed, we’re all having a nice time because we’re all being professionals, we’re all safe, and I’m doing my job. I’m not going to change what I’m doing. It’s the behaviour of other people.”

Emily also shared what it’s like to be a new mum to baby Barney and why he’s one of the reasons she’ll continue to campaign, saying: “There’s no such thing as a perfect parent but… there’s now so many more reasons why I’m going to continue campaigning and doing these things. I want my son to grow up in a world where women are treated better… It’s my chance to kind of educate in the best way I can.”

Emily added: “I love him so much. When I left the house the other day, I looked at him and my partner in bed, and I was going off to promote Rivals, and I just thought, ‘Life doesn’t get better than this’.