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Bella Maclean was put under extra pressure from her mum to land the key role of Taggie in Disney+’s hit adaptation of Jilly Cooper novel Rivals. “It’s my mum’s generation who really loved the books,” says Maclean. “She said, ‘You know you have to get this,’ for her sake!”
The actress is in the middle of a mammoth 10-month shoot for the series’ second season, but its success has made the set feel “a lot more calm” this time around.
Maclean, who was born in New York but moved to the UK when she was 10 years old, came to the attention of Rivals head producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins when he saw the actress in her first major play, Rupert Goold’s Spring Awakening at London’s Almeida Theatre.
“I got [the play] halfway through the final year [at Guildhall School of Music & Drama] and then Covid hit, it was the weirdest thing,” says Maclean, who would go on to be nominated at The Stage Debut Awards in 2022 for the role. “It was almost a year that I had to wait. It was agony — but what was great was there was this lovely glimmer of hope, because we knew the play was going to go on.”
Maclean also starred in Ian Rickson’s London Tide at the National Theatre, and had a key role in the fourth season of Netflix hit Sex Education. She shot Ray Panthaki’s feature directing debut In Starland alongside Sing Sing star Clarence Maclin earlier this year “in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi”.
“That was the craziest job I’ve ever done,” says Maclean. “It was a real, real indie… we were all living with each other. It was the most intense six weeks. There was a lot of improv and everyone was just so willing to totally go for it and be nuts.”
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