Nicola Coughlan has shared her mother’s less than thrilled reaction to her sex scenes in Bridgerton.
In the latest series of the Regency-era Netflix hit, Coughlan’s character Penelope Featherington shared a friends-to-lovers romance with Luke Newton’s Colin Bridgerton.
Speaking on the latest episode of The Graham Norton Show, Coughlan, 37, who rose to fame playing a teenager in Derry Girls, said: “I realised I was 35 when I was filming the season, and I’d never played an adult. I was like, ‘How do I do this?’”
She added: “The first two [Bridgerton] series, I looked a lot like Spongebob Squarepants, very curly, ginger [hair], yellow dress, sort a of a tent situation going on.
“But then it was weird having to play the romantic lead and… it’s a sexy show. A lot of sexy things happen in it, and then I realised I was going to have to do the sexy things and I was like, ‘Right.’”
Coughlan said of her mother’s reaction: “My mother was so mad at me about those scenes – as if they were my fault, so I didn’t go to the screening with her.”
The actor has previously spoken about how “empowering” it felt to do the scenes, telling Stylist: “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘f*** you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body. It was amazingly empowering.
“I felt beautiful in the moment, and I thought: ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how f***ing hot I looked!’”
Coughlan went viral for her reaction to one fan, who had said she was “very brave” for stripping off on camera.
“You know, it is hard, ’cause I think women with my body type, women with perfect breasts… We do not get to see ourselves onscreen enough,” she quipped at a screening.
She added: “I am a proud member of the perfect breasts community, and I hope you enjoy seeing them.”
Coughlan is one of The Independent’s TV heroes of 2024. Read more here, and find Coughlan’s biggest cultural picks of the year.
