Nicola Coughlan is arguably the biggest TV celebrity on the planet right now, but the Bridgerton star never set out to find fame and fortune. She talks to Donal O'Donoghue about staying true to herself, her support for Gaza and why she’s not interested in doing another Bridgerton-like show.
"I had a very normal life for a very long time," says Nicola Coughlan of those ordinary days before Bridgerton changed her life forever.
We’re sitting in the basement of a swanky Dublin hotel; the Galway actress recently arrived in Dublin, the latest leg on a global publicity tour that kicked off in January. She looks a million dollars, sporting an Artists4Ceasefire pin (of which more anon) and joyfully effervescent.
"I never wanted to do this job for fame and fortune," she says of how little has changed. And yet, it inevitably has. Shortly before we meet, a man wanders in, assesses the set-up and asks who I might be. It’s the actor’s security detail. I think of how Coughlan and her Bridgerton co-star Luke Newton were recently introduced on US primetime as the hottest couple on the planet right now. I realise that’s no exaggeration.
"Can I show you the frocks?" asked Nicola the first time we met on the set on Bridgerton in early 2020. 'Of course!’ we chirruped as she swiped through images of Regency couture on her phone and afterwards took us an impromptu tour of the wardrobe department for more glam gúnas.
"This lady deserves to be a star" we thought. In the four years since, her stock has risen ever higher, with a winning cameo in Barbie, a compelling performance in Big Mood and graduating to sizzling romantic lead in the third season of Bridgerton.
"My mum and my sister are the biggest Bridgeton superfans and they begged me to show them episode five," she says of the latest shows. "I wouldn’t. I said it will come out and then you’ll be sad because you’ll have nothing left to watch. And they said, ‘Ah Nicola, we won’t be sad, we promise you!’ but I stuck to my guns."
Nicola Coughlan is fun. And has substance to match her style. In an eloquent essay she wrote for Harper’s Bazaar in April ("I got to use my English degree"), she wrote about coping with fame and celebrity. Arriving late to the heady heights (she is 37 but looks a decade younger) she had experienced enough failure to know the true measure of success.
Her 20s – following drama schools in Oxford and Birmingham, she moved to London – were punctuated with rejections and working umpteen jobs to make ends meet. Bouncing back and forth between London and the family home in Oranmore ("It’s really hard not to be doing the thing you want so desperately" she told the Radio Times), she struggled with her mental health but never abandoned her dream before getting her big break as "wee lesbian" Clare in Derry Girls, the role that begat Bridgerton.
"I auditioned for the part and, not to be down on myself, thought that I just did an OK job," she says of being the first actor to be cast by Shonda Rhimes for the much-anticipated TV adaption of the best-selling Regency romance novels by Julia Quinn.
"I also thought that would be the first audition of many to get onto a Shonda Rhimes Netflix show. Two weeks or so following the audition, I got a call offering me the part and thought that feels too easy, like ‘Why would they want me?’ My agent said that they might have seen you (as wee Clare) in Derry Girls and I was thinking ‘but this isn’t Derry Girls in any way.’ But Shonda has amazing instincts for who she feels is right and it’s hard to argue with her track record for TV. It was such a boost and even though it has been five years, I still can’t believe it, like ‘How did I get so lucky?’"
Luck is only part of the story. Ever since she was five, having been introduced to the magic of the movies by her older sister with a screening of The Wizard of Oz, Nicola knew what she wanted. At the age of nine, there was a background part as ‘little girl feeding swans’ in the Sligo-shot thriller My Brother’s War (£30 and a day off school) and in her teens, she did voice-over work ("if there was a tiny frog or a little princess, I was like ‘I will do that voice!’" she recently told US chat show host Seth Meyers).
Following graduation from the University of Galway (English and Classical Civilisation), she went to the UK, not so much a yellow brick road as one pocked with potholes. "If you met me ten years ago, I’d have been a waitress in a restaurant in West London on a minimum wage and praying for tips," she says. "It’s unbelievable how much life has changed in just a few years."
Bridgerton’s appeal, as she sees it, is its timeless themes. "Times change, fashion changes, technology changes, but human nature doesn’t," she says. "Bridgerton has a lot of themes that people can relate to, including unrequited love, miscommunication and trying to figure out if someone likes you or not. Later in this season, we investigate how women with successful careers can be difficult for some men. The world needed something like Bridgerton’s romantic escapism, and we were just lucky we were that thing."
And yet, Coughlan is a relative newcomer to romantic fiction. "I’d never read a romance novel before I read one of the Bridgerton books," she says. "It had just completely passed me by. Then I heard that romance is the most read genre of fiction in the world. Did you know that? So Bridgerton was just crying out to be adapted and that’s the genius of Shonda Rhimes."
For most commentators, Nicola Coughlan is the best reason to watch the Netflix show, "the beating heart of Bridgerton" as Vanity Fair said of her charismatic portrayal of the book-loving wallflower who gets to bloom in season three.
"Penelope steps out of the shadows and into the light in her attempts to find a husband," she says. "For me, it was all about trying to find my confidence as a leading lady and take up that space. Just as it was gradual for Penelope, it was gradual for me, as up to season three I would do my bit and then go away to my trailer when the main love story was happening. It might be cheesy to say this, but the show made me think about love in a different way. Love can sometimes be seen as trivial and silly but it’s really the most important thing in the world. Living through Penelope’s love story made me realise that."
Earlier this year, Coughlan played Maggie, a struggling writer with bipolar disorder, in the Channel 4 comedy, Big Mood. As with Bridgerton, she stole the show.
"The Big Mood script was one of the most brilliant I’ve ever read," she says. "I’ve known Camilla (Whitehill, writer) for such a long time (they first met in drama school) and it is a very brave show. People watching it expected a sitcom but it’s so dark. When I was doing Big Mood, I was still filming Bridgerton so it was the most I ever pushed myself. I often default to imposter syndrome and my way of counteracting that is to work hard. I have photos on my phone of me in Penelope’s costume reading the script for Big Mood. The shows are so different but in my head, season three of Bridgerton and Big Mood are one. Big Mood was also a lesson in stop doubting yourself and just do it."
If she still carries some doubt, its tempered by steely self-belief. "When I was in drama school, I did my thesis on Mike Leigh and Ken Loach," she says.
"And Mike Leigh was once giving a talk to drama students who were pooh-poohing superhero movies and he stopped them, saying that there needs to be a space for everything. You’re not always in the mood for an arthouse film. Sometimes you want to watch a superhero movie.
"On the plane the other day, I watched A League of their Own, which I loved as a kid. And then I watched The Holdovers and Bridesmaids. I got to meet Ken Loach once when I auditioned for Jimmy’s Hall. I didn’t get the part and was devastated but just to meet him was incredible. I really admire people like Leigh and Loach, who stick to their principles, because it’s not always easy."
Coughlan also sticks to her principles and is well able to fight her corner. When a theatre critic described her as a "a fat girl" in a 2017 review of Jess and Joe Forever, she called him out on Twitter/X and subsequently wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian. "He was meant to review my work. Instead, he reviewed my body. That is not acceptable."
In 2022, she responded to the possible privatisation of Channel 4 by posting an image of herself with middle digit raised and more recently, she has campaigned for a ceasefire in Gaza and set up a fundraiser for several Palestinian causes, including the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) and Medical Aid for Palestine. "I can’t believe it," she says, taking out her phone and showing me the latest figure (just north of €1.6 million). "There are so many eyes on me right now and I wondered if I could do some good with that exposure."
Her stance is informed by her late father and his work. "My dad was in the Irish army and served with the UNTSO (United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation) and the family lived in Jerusalem and Syria in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He spent a lot of his life on peacekeeping missions. I was always aware of the history and growing up in Ireland, there were always so many rallies in support of Palestine.
"It can be a tricky topic to talk about but in simple terms, it’s about seeking a ceasefire, a collective of artists calling to Joe Biden to say that we want an immediate ceasefire and immediate release of all hostages. This is a symbol for peace and people misunderstand it. But sometimes you do have to stick your head above the parapet if you see something wrong that is happening."
While there have been the inevitable trolls, she has been largely applauded for her activism, an actor with the human touch. Her diverse upcoming projects include the film, Love and War (based on the true-life story of an Irishwoman whose daughter was abducted), the star-studded adaptation of Enid Blyton’s classic children’s book, The Magic Faraway Tree ("You know I’ll be working with Michael Palin? I cried when I met him one time") and a guest part in the Christmas Day edition of Doctor Who.
"People don’t think of actors as freelancers but that is what we are," she says. "People will assume that I just got offered the part (in The Magic Faraway Tree), but I had to audition for it. I like that, having to prove myself. I don’t want to keep doing just one thing. As much as I loved Derry Girls, I don’t want to do that again. And once Bridgerton is done, I don’t want to do that again either."
For the fourth season of Bridgeton (expected in 2026), Penelope Featherington (and Coughlan) stays in the picture, but the romantic focus will shift onto a different couple, as in the novels. "It’s bittersweet, certainly, but I couldn’t have given it any more," says Nicola, who has said that when she’s in her 80s, she will always have her steamy, sexy Bridgerton clinches to remember the way she was.
"I think as I’ve got older that I’ve got better at living in the moment and I appreciate things as they are and appreciate those moments for what they are. This is such a rare thing that (co-star Luke and I) have got to do and if the show continues to adapt all eight books, that will be only 16 people in the world who have had this experience. And I was one of them. So how cool is that?"
Almost as cool as being Nicola Coughlan.
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