Sex scenes are liberating! Nafessa Williams on Rivals, racism, and self-belief
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sex scenes involve a lot more padding and tape than you might expect! Rivals actress Nafessa Williams has found being at the centre of one of TV’s sexiest shows both nerve-wracking and incredibly liberating.
In this chat with Fearne, Nafessa explores what it means to play the only black woman in a white man's world in 1980s Britain, and why she sees her acting as her contribution to activism and representation.
Do you consider yourself to be ambitious and driven? Nafessa wonders if you rest as hard as you work... because you should! Plus, how to manifest the life you want, without forgetting the key component: action!
Watch Rivals series 2 on Disney+ from May 15th.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that builds real resilience. |
| 0:07.9 | Today I'm chatting to Nefisa Williams. I remember telling myself it's going to be hard. |
| 0:14.2 | You're going to hear no and you got to get comfortable with it. So I remember being like even if it takes me 20 years, like I'm going to do, you know, you just have to build up that mindset of longevity and shaking it off and getting back up. Like, I wake up and I'd be like, okay, guys, show me how good today is going to get. Oh, should we head back to the 80s with rivals? I think we should. I am in my mid-40s. so I remember the 80s. Obviously, I was born in 1981, |
| 0:40.5 | which to my kids sounds like the Tudor era. And the 80s were a mixed bag, but what I would say |
| 0:48.0 | is that there were some real treats in the 80s, one of them, big hair. You know, we like circle back in fashion to different |
| 0:57.4 | decades. I don't think we've actually really done the 80s. Like we'll do a bit of a shoulder |
| 1:02.4 | pad here and there, but it's not been like a full 80s deep dive. Like when you see pictures or |
| 1:09.3 | video footage of pop stars or actors or whatever or the news from the 80s, everybody, men, women, dogs and cats, everyone had massive hair. |
| 1:21.7 | I reckon, I think we need to start bringing this back. I'd be really up for it, like sleeping in rollers kind of thing. |
| 1:27.7 | My mum in the 80s, I've got a brilliant picture. I've got to dig it out. She had a full on, |
| 1:32.4 | like a sort of two inch high kind of mohawk on the top of the head that went down into a mullet |
| 1:39.3 | at the back. Like can you remember what Linda McCartney's hair was like in the 80s? |
| 1:44.4 | That's what Lynn Cotton had. |
| 1:47.1 | Extraordinary hair. |
| 1:48.7 | I think we need to... |
| 1:49.7 | We're a bit boring with hair these days, guys. |
| 1:51.8 | It's just like, it is what it is. |
| 1:54.2 | I think we need to go back to the 80s. |
| 1:56.1 | Big hair, big shoulder pads all the way. |
| 2:00.6 | So look, let's talk more about rivals. |
| 2:02.9 | It's on Disney. |
| 2:04.2 | I bet you've already seen series one if you haven't. |
... |
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