Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan has opened up on the “scary” experience of filming her first sex scene with actor Luke Newton for Bridgerton.
Originally from Galway, rather than Derry, Coughlan shot to fame when she starred as Clare Devlin in the hit sitcom Derry Girls and has since gone from strength to strength playing the lead role in the Netflix hit Bridgerton.
She opened up in an interview with Time magazine about her “gorgeous friendship” with Luke Newtown, who plays love interest Colin Bridgerton as she admitted finding the “intimate” first sex scene “scary” because of the nudity.
Reflecting on her fame and the upward trajectory of her career since getting her big break with Derry Girls, she said: “I just feel really lucky to be working, because all of my 20s, I wasn’t.
“There’s no making it,” she added. “You just have to keep going and can’t rest on your laurels.”
On her friendship with Luke Newton, she said: “A lot of people really want me to marry Luke.
“We have this gorgeous friendship. We have such a love for one another and this experience that I’ll never have with someone else again. Isn’t it gorgeous that a man and woman can have that sort of relationship with one another?”
She also told the prestigious US publication about her approach to her character Penelope’s first sex scene in Bridgerton with Colin, saying: “It was intimate, but it was also scary because of the level of nudity. We wanted to do justice to the story and this beautiful moment where he makes her feel really loved and they’re vulnerable together.”
She added: “I’m so proud of that scene.”
The Galway girl also opened up on the response to her casting in the lead role of Bridgerton, describing how she faced repeated questions about her body.
“Don’t call me brave,” she said. “I have a cracking pair of boobs. There’s nothing brave about that, that’s actually just me showing them off.”
“I’m a few sizes below the average size of a woman in the UK and I’m seen as a ‘plus-size heroine’, she said.
“I worked my arse off for that show. I barely saw my family and friends, and people were just going, ‘But your body…’
“I don’t take it as nice. Making it about how I look is reductive and boring. What if I was suddenly going to play a ballerina and lose a shit ton of weight, are you not going to like me anymore? That’s insane and so insulting.”
