TOUGH POPPY
Poppy Delevingne reveals how she bagged Riviera role after row with co-star in tense audition
POPPY Delevingne may be branching out into more acting roles, but she had to fight tooth and nail for her biggest job yet.
The model and socialite, 34, plays Daphne Eltham on the Sky drama after joining the popular series in the second season.
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Riviera is set in the French Riviera and follows Georgina Clios (Julia Stiles), an American art curator whose life is turned upside down after the death of her billionaire husband Constantine.
The third season picks up one year after the explosive finale of the second series and sees Georgina, now Ryland, leaving the cursed Riviera for a new life.
Delevingne plays the wife of wealthy philanthropist Raafi Al-Qadar and who goes on to befriend Georgina after they rescue her from the sea while on their honeymoon.
The model was already a fan of the show after watching the entire first season on a flight from London to Los Angeles.
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She admits being "cross-eyed" after bingeing the show but was "totally hooked".
So when it came to being an offered an audition for the high stakes series, Delevingne "jumped at the chance".
But much like the show, one of her auditions was full of drama.
"The very first audition was just a generic audition where they gave me a few scenes to learn," she told Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes on This Morning.
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"But the second audition was a chemistry read with Jack Fox who plays my twin, Nico, and we'd known each other for a few years before."
"The director wanted us to do some improvisation and we ended up having a little bit of a fight between us about what we were improvising."
Their tiff is what landed them gig because Delevingne explained "at that point the director turned around saying... 'I think I found my twins, if they're having an argument off set [it will work]'."
Delevingne also opened up about what season three has in store for Daphne which will involve watching her "unravel".
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"Daphne comes to realise how evil and deceitful, and twisted her twin brother is and begins to unravel," she revealed.
"When you next see her in season three you witness her demise, she is still charming... but she has elements to her where she has fragility and vulnerability but she goes to the dark side."
The socialite also admitted Riviera provided a great escape for viewers especially during the tough year that has been 2020.
"You can sit on your sofa and be transported to all these exotic locations, we go to Venice to Argentina, it's pure escapism and you can just sit back and relax," she said.
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"All these beautiful people... and underneath there's all this corruption and you can get lost in it.
Despite a successful career in modelling, Delevingne "struggled for years" to get acting gigs.
"I struggled for years to get into the room with casting directors because they were like 'no way, she’s a model and clearly bored, can we take her seriously?' so I just sort of worked really hard at that and it took a long time to break the barrier for them to even see me," she told .
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Even though she has picked up some huge acting roles in National Geographic’s Genius, and films like Kingsman: The Golden Circle and Bittersweet Symphony, Delevingne used lockdown to "work on my craft".
"I feel so new to the game and so much to learn," she admitted on This Morning.
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"I've been online doing training and acting coaching... anything I could do to keep myself busy."
Riviera airs Thursdays on Sky Atlantic at 9pm and is available to stream on NOW TV.
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