‘I feel like a competition winner’: Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan on luck, social media and her ‘nice’ list

‘Everyone wants to know who’s awful. Don’t you want to know who’s nice?’: Nicola Coughlan wears dress by richardquinn.com; and earrings by goossens-paris.com. Photograph: Cameron McNee/The Observer

I have a nice list,” declares Nicola Coughlan. She pauses, perhaps to catch her breath at the end of another mile-a-minute answer, or perhaps for dramatic effect. “Of celebrities!” The disclosure comes somewhat out of nowhere, 40 minutes into our Friday-afternoon interview on Zoom. I’d asked the star of Derry Girls and Bridgerton about her public love-in with Kim Kardashian – not the tabs she’s been keeping, privately, on her new famous friends.

In fact, Coughlan explains, “ideally” her nice list is of names she hasn’t met herself. “People are always going to be nice to you, aren’t they? This has to be evidence from several sources that they’re nice.”