Bridgerton third season female lead Nicola Coughlan (Derry Girls, Big Mood, Harlots) spoke with the Los Angeles Times recently about how she felt relaxed while shooting her intimate scenes with co-star Luke Newton (Lake Placid: Legacy, The Lodge, The Cut), Variety reports, by sharing that: “By the end of the day, we were both lying under a blanket, not clothed, just chillin’. We were like, ‘This is why nudists do it.’”
Lately, according to Variety, the actress shared in profile interview released by Stylist (via Buzzfeed) that she was not going to change her mind about the decision of going “very naked” for a specific scene in the third season of Bridgerton to respond clearly at people who were criticizing her weight online.
Coughlan, according to Variety, shared that she collaborated with the intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot on her sex scenes, very closely, by saying: “You go, ‘Ok, what do I want to show? What don’t I want to show? What’s scripted, and what do I want to add?’”
“I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included,” Coughlan added, via Variety. “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘fuck 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 fucking hot I looked!’”
Coughlan has a past of being body-shamed on social media because of her weight, but that did not ever detain her from pursuing acting as her job. She courageously spoke her truth to them in a 2022 Instagram post which, according to Variety, read that: “If you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me…It’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day.”
Afterwards, according to Variety, she spoke about the criticism she received on an interview with the Irish Times: “All I care about is the work. Bodies change, if I lose weight or gain weight or I do anything it’s no one’s business, all I care about is doing good acting and being judged on that.”
Coughlan and Newton are now the leads for the third season of Bridgerton with their characters developing from close friends to lovers, according to Variety. The actress teased on an interview with SiriusXM Hits 1 that, in early 2024, her contract with Shondaland and Netflix for the third season had a clause that explained that there was an alternative package of all the episodes without any sexual scene included because of her parents’ view on the delicate topic.
“It’s literally written into my contract. People think I’m saying it as a joke,” Coughlan shared, via Variety. “I just don’t want to … We grew up Irish Catholic. That’s just not how we vibe.”
The first part of Bridgerton‘s season three premieres today on Netflix, and the second part will be released on June 13.