A wildly anxious blonde gay teenager growing up in Derry in the 1990s and a redheaded wallflower with a scandalous secret, coming of age in early 1800s London. It’s safe to say that Galway girl Nicola Coughlan has impressive range. She’s the lead in the most successful Bridgerton season yet – Variety in the US came out with a stat that 2.3 billion minutes of season three on Netflix had been streamed in just one week, and that’s only for the first four episodes. All this while starring as a bipolar woman in the excellent Channel 4 dark comedy Big Mood and worrying so much about her parents watching her Bridgerton sex scenes that she considered asking executives to make a special PG edit to give her mam. It’s safe to say I love her. She might just be my Princess Diana.
Back in 2020, just before Bridgerton burst on to our screens and turned period dramas on their heads, Coughlan issued a tweet suggesting that it might not be the family-friendly Christmas Day watch that many anticipated. As well as a racially diverse cast, a time-travelling soundtrack and a sometimes relaxed attitude to historical accuracy, Bridgerton is, well, extremely horny. In most period films and TV shows the sex and intimacy is so painfully repressed and restrained that we are only treated to a single “bit” that represents desire or lust. In BBC’s Pride and Prejudice it was Colin Firth coming out of the lake in a wet white shirt. In the Pride and Prejudice film starring Keira Knightley, Mr Darcy’s longing for Elizabeth Bennet was distilled down into a single clenched fist. There is a hysterically funny scene in the second Bridget Jones book where Bridget interviews Firth who reveals that his direction on set during a pivotal scene was to imagine he had an erection. Bridget becomes understandably and irrecoverably flustered.
[ Bridgerton and Nicola Coughlan take to the red carpet in DublinOpens in new window ]
In Bridgerton, much less is left to the imagination. While Coughlan played a pivotal role as Penelope Featherington in the first two seasons, she was a supporting character. Season three has seen her take the romantic lead role in a simmering friends-to-lovers storyline. With Coughlan representing a body type less often seen in romantic female leads, it was a thrilling prospect to see Penelope get it on with extremely eligible bachelor Colin Bridgerton. In interviews to promote the show Coughlan spoke about her doubts around the scrutiny she would be under, but also said that filming sex scenes and nude scenes were remarkably empowering for her. In an interview with Stylist magazine Coughlan said that the actors on set get to choose how undressed they are for their scenes and she chose to get “very naked” as a “f**k you to all the conversation surrounding my body”. She said: “When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how f**king hot I looked.”
Of course, the discourse around her body has been hugely disappointing. Just because she’s short with a rounder physique than the ridiculous beauty standard, she’s been subjected to critique that none of the previous Bridgerton leads have. And still, she does her job and flies around the world to do interview after interview with a smile on her face, breaking down those impossible beauty standards with every scene she films and every question she answers. The work she’s doing may seem superficial but it is incredibly, incredibly important. Besides, as so many have pointed out, she’s “not even fat”. She’s not, but that’s not the point. She’s different. And we all know how dangerous the idiots who don’t like different are.
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On top of all this, Coughlan has defied those who said that showing support for Palestine would damage her career. She’s just raised €1.2 million for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and she wore a conspicuous red pin to support Artists for Ceasefire for the majority of her Bridgerton press tour. She’s arguably one of the most famous women in the world right now, so I’d say the damage to her career has been minimal. Take note, Taylor Swift.
The second half of Bridgerton season three drops on June 13th and with it those naked sex scenes Coughlan has teased. If the lámh-dropping carriage scene from episode four is anything to go by, Penelope and Colin have lots more to show us beyond the typical unchaperoned hand grazes and wistful looks across the harpsichord. Go on Nicola Coughlan, you good thing you.