The actors are pleased that this season showcases their characters, Colin and Peneleope, as lovers who are “slightly awkward and funny and sensitive and weird.”
Nicola Coughlan had one important question after she was hired for “Bridgerton” — the first actor, in fact, to be cast in the wildly popular romance drama: Who was going to play Colin Bridgerton, her character’s love interest?
Coughlan — who read the Julia Quinn source novels as soon as she learned she’d be playing Penelope Featherington — knew her character would eventually be enmeshed in an onscreen romance with Colin, the third son of the wealthy and influential Bridgerton family.
The Netflix series, like the books, is set in London during the Regency era of the early 1800s and follows the romantic adventures of the Bridgerton siblings.
“I read Colin’s and Pen’s book first,” Coughlan said in an interview, referring to the third novel, “Romancing Mr. Bridgerton.” “I was like, ‘I want to know who I’m dealing with.’ Luckily he’s great,” she added, as her Colin, Luke Newton, sat beside her.
That it’s a match made in TV heaven seems evident both from the fervour with which fans have greeted Season 3 of the period drama (the highest-rated season of the series, according to streaming guide JustWatch) and from the obvious regard in which the co-stars hold each other.
They genially answered questions together in a Toronto hotel suite ahead of next week’s debut of the season’s final four episodes, affirming each other’s answers, their responses often blending into one another’s.
It sounds like it’s been a whirlwind for the actors since the four episodes of Part 1 debuted on May 16, ruling Netflix’s top 10 list with 82 million views and counting.
Coughlan, 37, who’s from Galway, Ireland, and Newton, 31, who grew up near Brighton, England, dove into interviews that same day day in New York, where they attended a red-carpet premiere of the first new episode after flying in from a press tour in Milan. They were in Toronto for two days this week, to talk to the media and attend another red-carpet premiere at the Elgin Theatre of the first episode of Part 2.
And then there were the eight months spent filming the third season, during which there were only six or seven days they weren’t on set, Newton said.
How do you prepare for that kind of intensity?
“There were a lot of boring, practical things, like we both made sure we were going to the gym a lot so we had energy,” Coughlan said. “We were eating really healthy, going to bed early. It’s certainly been a lesson; the way for me, I guess, to counteract impostor syndrome is just work really hard and just put everything into it.”
“You kind of sacrifice any sort of normality outside,” Newton said. “But then we’ve both had a moment where we’ve watched it back and been like, it was so worth it ’cause we just gave everything. And the proof is there.”
“We did everything we wanted to do and it came out how we wanted it, which is an amazing feeling,” added Coughlan.
“And, ultimately, we enjoyed it,” said Newton. “Being able to lead a show like this is one of the biggest privileges.”
Speaking for myself, it’s been a delight watching these two old friends find their way to each other as lovers.
If Season 1 was about lust, with the powerful attraction between Daphne Bridgerton and the Duke of Hastings, and Season 2 was about longing, with Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma yearning for each other, Season 3 has been about something even more relatable: the comfort but also elation of two people coming together after a long friendship.
“Once they get together, it’s so intimate,” Coughlan said. “True intimacy is when you can be naked with someone but giggling about something, like that’s one of the most beautiful things in life … but it can still be sexy.”
Speaking of intimacy, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that viewers will see Colin and Penelope have sex in these next four episodes. There’s no such thing as a “Bridgerton” season without sex. And besides — spoiler alert if you haven’t watched yet — the couple already engaged in foreplay in a carriage in Episode 4, when Colin proposed to Penelope.
“Of course we were nervous,” Coughlan said about shooting their sex scene. “It’s deeply exposing in many different ways, but we really had each other’s backs and also we had a say in what we showed onscreen … Once we got there we felt in the driver’s seat.”
“And there’s so much prep that goes into it,” added Newton, “with the amount of meetings that we had with directors, producers, Jess (Brownell), the showrunner, and the intimacy co-ordinator. Just constantly having that conversation makes you feel reassured that everyone’s on our side … Ultimately the goal is to make the most authentic and real scene that feels appropriate to their love story. And I feel like we did that.”
This being “Bridgerton,” love stories always involve obstacles, whether it was the duke’s vow to never marry or have children in Season 1, or Anthony’s determination to wed Kate’s sister in Season 2. Here the hurdle is Penelope’s secret identity as Lady Whistledown, the gossip purveyor whose sharply worded pamphlets keep the high society known as “the ton” enthralled, but who’s seen as an enemy of the Bridgerton family.
And it’s not just the unflattering things that Penelope has written about Colin and his siblings that will be an issue.
“Not a lot of men are super comfortable with very successful women,” Coughlan said.
“The power dynamic between the two sort of shifts, which was really interesting to play,” said Newton.
As far as showrunner Brownell is concerned, both Colin and Penelope have been underdogs on the show. “You have Pen, who’s been a real wallflower, and Colin who, as the third (son) in the Bridgerton family, has taken some time to get to know himself. And so it was really fun to bring these two out into the centre,” Brownell has said.
Coughlan, who before “Bridgerton” was best known for the Irish comedy “Derry Girls,” said she’s never been very interested in playing a lead character, although she has made peace with it on “Bridgerton.”
“I always use ‘Grease’ as an example because, for me, Sandy and Danny are the least interesting characters … As a kid, I dressed up as Frenchy for Halloween.”
Newton said he likes the fact that Colin and Penelope are “not the typical romantic leads. They’re slightly awkward and funny and sensitive and weird. You know, we’ve spent a lot of time standing at the side of a ball watching the romantic leads dance and now we have had the opportunity to do that and tell these two stories.”
“We’ve also allowed them to be flawed,” Coughlan said, whether it’s Penelope wounding people with her Whistledown missives or Colin’s initial vanity when he returns to London from his world travels.
The season, she added, is “a lot about self-acceptance and self-love, and how someone can help you find that … When you realize who you are, and someone celebrates that and you celebrate that, it’s something very special.”
Season 3, Part 2 of “Bridgerton” debuts June 13 on Netflix.
