ALEX HASSELL - Tatler
Grooming by Richard Wynne-Ellis
Alex Hassell is back for Rivals season Two! Meet Rupert Campbell-Black, the most handsome man in Britain, as he wined and dined Tatler ahead of the steamy first showing
As filming for Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals begins, what happened when Annabel Sampson went to meet the man who made husbands jealous ahead of this riotous remake of Rivals
October, 2024. The most handsome man in all of England walks into Soho House on Dean Street. At the reception desk, heads turn; eyes peer over books and magazines’ eyelashes start to flutter, something primitive - carnal, even - takes hold. In life, as in fiction: Jilly Cooper’s most fancied character Rupert Campbell-Black - or the actor Alex Hassell - has entered the building, moulded as a fictional formulation of real life aristocrats Andrew Parker Bowles, Rupert Lycett-Green and the Earl of Suffolk.
By now, it’s something Hassell, the star of Disney+’s riotous new bonkbuster Rivals, is well used to. So, what was it like to be ogled? ‘It was great,’ he laughs, taking a sip from his decaf American, ‘it was okay…it helps.’ Hassell, 44, is frankly a safety hazard right now, smouldering at 15 meters tall, seven times human height, wrapped around Waterloo’s IMAX as well as the screens above Piccadilly Circus. The situation is worthy of a Diet Coke advert in the nineties: ‘The cast are all told to look at me like I’m the most attractive man in the world,’ he says grinning, leaning back on the roof terrace. ‘Those days would often be intimidating, because I would come in thinking “sh*t, I have to do this” - and actually it’s everyone else. They just look at me in a certain kind of [thoroughly lusty] way, and that helps me go, “great, well I’ll look back at you the same.”
Cast with the glowing approval of Dame Jilly, this Rupert Campbell-Black is tall, dark and devastatingly handsome - albeit a lateral casting choice given RCB (as the die-hard fans call him) is notoriously blue-eyed and fair-haired. Hassell, who was cast from 600 hopefuls, was convinced he wasn’t right for the role: ‘I actually said to my agent, “I shoudln’t bother auditioning,” because I didn’t think I would have a chance of getting the part or would even know how to play it if I did.’ But spoiler alert, Hassell is magnetic. ‘I’m so pleased - otherwise it would have been terribly awkward, wouldn’t it?’ he says, with more than a flash of 007, ‘Someone said that Rupert was the James Bond of erotica or something. And in my mind, there’s definitely more of Roger Moore…he’s got his tongue firmly in his cheek.’