Nicola Coughlan is featured prominently on Bridgerton Season 3.
As the character of Penelope Featherington, Coughlan sets out early on to find a husband, changing up her wardrobe and heading into the marriage market.
This new feeling of empowerment for Penelope is an example of art imitating life… as Coughlan explains in a new interview that she made a request of producers when it came to her on-screen depiction this year…
Nicola Coughlan on Bridgerton Season 3. (Netflix)
… she wanted to bare it all.
“I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included,” the actress said this week to Stylist magazine. “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice.”
Coughlan might not possess the ideal body, at least not according to her critics — which are mostly total strangers on the Internet.
To her extreme credit, the Netflix star is refusing to allow this criticism to affect her work. Or her self-confidence.
We absolutely adore Nicola Coughlan on the Netflix series Bridgerton. (Netflix)
“It just felt like the biggest ‘f-ck you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering,” Coughlan says of her decision to strip all the way down on Bridgerton.
She added to Stylist:
“I felt beautiful in the moment, and I thought: ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how f-cking hot I looked!’”
Amen! We absolutely love it.
Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlan attend Netflix’s “Bridgerton” Season 3 World Premiere at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on May 13, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Coughlan had never filmed a sex scene prior to her role on Bridgerton.
She previously gave a great deal of credit — in a chat with The Los Angeles Times — about how comfortable she feels opposite Like Newton, who plays Colin Bridgerton, her character’s lover on the Netflix drama.
“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,’” she told this newspaper a few days ago.
It unfortunately took Coughlan a little while to arrive at this point, however.
Nicola Coughlan attends the season 3 photocall for “Bridgerton” at Bulgari Hotel on May 9, 2024 in Milan, Italy. ((Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
In 2022, Coughlan asked critics to leave her alone via an emotional Instagram post.
“Hello! So just a thing- if you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me,” the actress wrote alongside a mirror selfie.
“Most people are being nice and not trying to be offensive but I am just one real life human being and it’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look- being sent directly to you every day,” Coughlan continued, concluding as follows:
“I understand I’m on TV and that people will have things to think and say but I beg you not to send it to me directly.”
Nicola Coughlan: I Wanted to Be VERY Nude on Bridgerton Season 3! was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.