“It’s About Keeping Myself On My Toes”: Aidan Turner On Challenging Himself And Stealing Scenes In Rivals

From emotional vampire to heroic hobbit and historical heartthrob, the Irish actor has stolen hearts and swept accolades for nearly two decades. He’s spending 2026 in some of TV and theatre’s most debauched fictional domains: from the raunchy ’80s-set Disney+ drama to a stint at The National Theatre as the anti-hero of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Essentially, the 42-year-old is back at his old tricks – playing complex characters and being devastatingly dashing doing so.

You probably know someone who really loves Aidan Turner. A somewhat old-school heartthrob, he predates today’s rotation of internet boyfriends. Such obsessions might stretch back to 2009, when the now-42-year-old Dublin-born, London-based actor announced himself as morally complex vampiric lothario John Mitchell in cult favourite supernatural drama Being Human. Or it might have materialised at his silver screen breakthrough, as heroic Hobbit Kili in Peter Jackson’s prequel trilogy of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth classic.

Most likely, however, their love fully hit its stride when he met audiences as the titular character in BBC’s Poldark. Running for five seasons from 2015-2019, the period-piece romantic drama was one of Britain’s biggest shows in the back half of the decade, and saw Turner, as the broodily charismatic landowner, metamorphose into the apple of every mum’s eye in households across Britain and Ireland. And for anyone not already under his thrall, in 2026, he’s back at TV’s apex as the thick-moustached Declan O’Hara in steamy Dame Jilly Cooper adaptation, Rivals. Thanks to his portrayal of the prime time TV host, complete with a straight-edged earnestness and vamped-up sex appeal, he’s back once again in the arms of screen mania.

With chisel and charm, Turner has spent nearly two decades positioned as one of British and Irish TV and cinema’s premium eye-candies. But he’s more than a sweet touch. Each of his roles has shown a different string to his bow; an ability to mould himself into whatever comes his way. “It’s about keeping myself on my toes,” he grins, boyish yet concise. “Trying to mix it up, change, be different. Keep challenging myself with different genres and different characters, as much as an audience will accept me for it.”

It’s early April, one of the first truly sunny days of the year, as Turner logs onto our call with a spring in his step and warmth in his manner. The thick upper-lipped facial piece that he’d recently grown and groomed for the filming of the second season of Rivals has been shaved to obscurity, replaced by smart stubble and a youthful grace. There’s something grounded and trustworthy about Turner; an everyday bloke, no pretension or arrogance. One purely focused on his livelihood and his family, which right now, is a finely-struck equilibrium.

“Balancing family life with theatre life is always a challenge,” he shrugs.  But there’s a sense that this is a particularly hectic and stressful time for Turner. Within days of wrapping the Rivals shoot, he was in rehearsals for his latest stint on the stage for Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The Marianne Elliott-directed (Angels in America, War Horse) production opened in April and is playing until 6th June, with a show a day, except on Sundays, and two on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Adding in the fact that his wife, fellow actor Caitlin FitzGerald (Masters of Sex, Sweetbitter), is away for work, and his four-year-old son is off school for Easter break, it’s a wonder he found an hour in his schedule for his Man About Town interview.

“It’s nice to be busy,” he says assuringly, shaking off any sign of schedule deluge. “I don’t want to make it sound like it’s too overwhelming. I mean, it’s a busy time, but there will be times when it’s not so busy. I know I’ll have the summer off; after the play finishes, I’ll have a couple of months to hang and chill and do family stuff. It’s swings and roundabouts.” 

For now, focus is very much on the play – a return to his theatrical roots, having begun his career in front of live audiences following graduation from Dublin’s Gaiety School of Acting in 2004. It’s been about three years since Turner was last on stage, but it is a practice that he will always come back to – a paramount method of testing his nuance and mettle alike. “Every few years I like to get back on stage if I can,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of TV projects for the last while, and they’re a different beast. They’re demanding in different ways. I think if I let [not being on stage] go on too long, maybe five, six, eight years, I don’t know whether I could go back to it. I think it might become too scary. It’s exciting and terrifying in equal measures, I suppose. So I just thought now was time to get back on stage again, and this was the perfect opportunity.”

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is an apt project for Turner to throw himself back into theatre. Widely known as quintessential classic French literature, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel is a tantalising tale of sex, social class and power. It has been adapted countless times for the screen and stage – not least as Dangerous Liaisons, the triple Oscar-winning 1988 Hollywood caper starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. Christopher Hampton, who wrote the screenplay, is heavily involved in this retelling at the National Theatre, which sees Turner appearing as the debonair but darkly motivated Vicomte de Valmont opposite Oscar-nominee Lesley Manville’s dominant and cunning Marquise de Merteuil, as the pair rise the ranks of the bourgeoisie through backstabbing and seduction.

For Turner, it’s a story he’s been familiar with since drama school, and a character in de Valmont whom he’s long been drawn towards. “I just thought he was a really interesting character,” he says. “I couldn’t quite work out what his motives were. Is he a good guy? Morally, where does he sit? He’s coerced into playing these games with Madame de Merteuil that are sick and manipulative. They’re basically two wealthy aristocrats who weaponise sex to get what they want. But he’s not exactly a psychopath, he does feel empathy and actually manages to fall in love with somebody who he doesn’t realise he is in love with.”

Turner impresses. Not only in the humanity and moral intricacy that he brings to a character who has so often been played as the villain, but also in managing the sheer length and stamina required for the show. It’s a marathon job, but Turner is an adept runner. “It can be difficult,” he admits on maintaining consistency across such a prolonged period. “We’ve only done about a dozen shows so far, and we have about 100 to do. I barely leave the stage during the runtime, but that’s easier in some ways. I’ve done plays in the past where you have a couple of key scenes, and that’s it. That’s harder because it’s difficult not to go into Groundhog Day after 20 performances. It begins to feel the same, and I don’t know how to listen anymore. But when you’re as busy as I am in this play, it’s easier to stay engaged, because you really have to be on the whole time. You feel a little bit like an athlete.“ 

Though he returns now in fighting shape to theatre, TV is where Turner decisively made his name, and continues to augment it. Being Human, which co-starred Russell Tovey and Antonia Thomas, ran for three seasons on BBC Three from 2009-11, and was a launchpad moment for its trio of leads. Turner’s vampire stood out sharpest, though; angsty yet playful, there was a Byronic complexity to Mitchell that was refreshingly anti-archetypal. Off the back of Being Human, Turner’s career took a Brobdingnagian leap into one of the decade’s biggest cinematic franchises – The Hobbit Trilogy. What could have prompted a major Hollywood career became more of a sliding doors moment; the lukewarm reception of the films made it tricky for its talented cast, which also boasted UK TV regulars Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage, to show themselves capable of the step up. 

His following project, though, evinced his star quality in all its power. “I knew on the Monday when the ratings came out that I was going to be doing it for five years,” Turner quips, reminiscing on the immediate impact of Poldark. It was a colossal success, the kind that doesn’t seem possible anymore for a terrestrial TV show, the equivalent of Netflix’s crazes like You or Bridgerton, picking up BAFTAs and sowing Turner into the fabric of British TV. “I just knew we had an audience who were really loyal,” he says. “It wasn’t like if we have a bad second series, everyone’s going to fuck off. It’s just that type of show.”

By the end of his fifth season as Poldark – with a handful of smaller film projects like 2016’s The Secret Scripture and 2018’s The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot sandwiched in between – Turner desired something new, a revitalisation, fatigued by such a lengthy and taxing term in the same role. “I really enjoyed doing the show, and I’m very proud of it, but yeah, when I finished the show, I was determined to play against what Poldark was and go in a different direction. It’s hard to do this job if you don’t feel challenged and excited to get up every morning to go and do it.”

Those post-Poldark ventures have seen him depict everything from world-famous artist da Vinci in Leonardo to a tennis coach in Fifteen-Love, to a seedy shrink in The Suspect and a mysterious operative in The Diplomat. But it’s perhaps his latest role in Rivals, the gloriously entertaining adaptation of Cooper’s novel of the same name, that has proved the most substantial hit since. 

Rivals, a show based on the feud between two British plutocrats and how the unravelling relationship seeps into a fictional town’s television station, is rich, gratifying TV. It’s sexy, intelligent, funny and shocking, with dazzling 1980s decoration, and a pantheon of beloved thespians all clearly having the time of their lives playing slimy, unpredictable characters. “There’s a tone that we managed to hit,” Turner acknowledges. “I don’t know how we did it; it was never necessarily discussed. But we all just got it from day one, we just knew what it was. Which doesn’t always happen; it can take a while. I think it’s just a credit to our producers and our writers, and Jilly as well. We all just understood what we were doing and how we were going about doing it.” 

The shoot for the second season was 10 months long, but rather than it feeling like a gruelling endeavour by the time it wrapped, “I swear I’ve never felt this way, but I almost didn’t want it to end,” Turner enthuses. Such was the joy of working with the star-studded ensemble that boasts the likes of Doctor Who and Broadchurch royalty David Tennant, comedic heavyweight Katherine Parkinson, chameleon Rupert Everett, and ubiquitous geezer Danny Dyer. 

The chemistry on-screen between the array of top-tier talents is palpable, with the work-life balance also lighter for Turner and his co-stars. “All the actors are brilliant and wonderfully gifted. And also, there’s no out-and-out lead. It feels like there are a dozen of us who are all sharing the narrative, which is great. It just makes it more fun, and also, the demand isn’t so high for every single actor. You’re not in every single scene. So you have time to prepare for the work, which is something that doesn’t always happen when you’re leading a show. With Rivals, it’s a little looser where we can all take a breath sometimes. You might have a few weeks that are intense, but then you might have a few weeks that aren’t so much. You get time to be social and just to be in person, really, outside of work and in work as well. It is a little more civil – a bit more grown-up.”

Turner’s newsman Declan O’Hara, whom he had a “wealth of resource material” to pick from, including his own dad and secondary school teachers, is the audience surrogate. He offers a sense of normality among the infidelity, scandals and backstabbing that the majority of the cohort entertain themselves with. “He is the outsider. He’s allowing us into this world and holding up a mirror, like – ‘Look at how fucking crazy all these people are’. He doesn’t really want to move there; he’s doing it for a job. So he’s on the periphery, on the outside. There was something about that that felt quite comforting. I didn’t need to be in this fickle world of everyone just shagging each other. He takes himself and his work quite seriously. I just thought it’d be fun to play a character like that.”

Turner’s two current roles in Rivals and Les Liaisons Dangereuses reflect his ambition to continuously bolster his arsenal. An absorbing leading presence, a knee-weakening sex symbol and a layered character actor, he may be, but he’s far from finished. Top of his list next is a side-step into something a little more suitable for his number one fan. “I like the idea, because I’ve never done it before, of doing something my son could watch, who is only four,” he smiles before he straps back into his feverish schedule. “He’s too young to watch anything I’ve ever done, so in the next couple of years, it might be fun to do a family show like that, or an animation or something.” Watch out, CBeebies – Aidan Turner is coming for the crown.

Rivals Season 2 is available to watch now on Disney+ (UK) and Hulu (US)