TV and movie star Nicola Coughlan has taken the world by storm, between her turns as the studious Clare Devlin in “Derry Girls” and undercover gossip maven Penelope Featherington — eventually Penelope Bridgerton — in “Bridgerton.” But the climb to the top of the Hollywood food chain wasn’t an easy one for her. The actress has suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune just like many other entertainment industry hopefuls — but she’s come out the other end grinning, with a keen sense of humor to boot. For all of the things she’s been through, it’s clear her wits have never abandoned her.
But when one reads the list of struggles she’s faced, one cannot help but feels a great amount of sympathy for her. Whether Coughlan is being stalked by the paparazzi, mocked for her weight, enduring the death of her father and a deep depressive period, concerning that she’s not good enough to be as successful as she is, or dealing with real-life injuries incurred on set, she’s definitely come a long way and has all of the scars to prove it. Here’s a list of 10 heartbreaking details about the real-life travails of Nicola Coughlan.
Nicola Coughlan has endured an awful lot of negativity related to the shape of her body over the course of her career. While appearing in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” on the West End, she wrote an essay about the criticism she has faced simply for looking the way she does and appearing onstage, with reviews of the play and the show referencing her weight instead of her talent.
On “Bridgerton,” she acted out love scenes that required partial nudity.She promptly took the chance to seize control of the narrative, asking for certain scenes and lines of dialogue from Penelope’s book-based adventures be included — including requesting that during one of the sex scenes she be “very naked” during the event. “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘f*** you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering,” she told Stylist. She added that she was glad she had a record of how she looked at that period of time.
Still, some comments she got from fans of the show were less than kind. “I remember this really drunk girl once talking to me in a bathroom being like, ‘I loved [Bridgerton] because of your body.’ And started talking about my body, and I was like, ‘I want to die. I hate this so much,'” she told Elle.
She felt violated after being followed by the paparazzi
With fame comes a lot of pressure, whether it’s from the media, a studio, or your fanbase. In Nicola Coughlan’s case, she’s been forced to deal with members of the paparazzi who have tailed her from place to place, invading her privacy and leaving her feeling quite violated.
“Imagine if you had an evening at the pub and then you walked around, talking, having a lovely time. And a few days later, you see pictures of that. The violation is immense,” she told The Guardian. She later added, “people go, ‘Oh, there’s so-and-so from TV.’ They forget you’re a person.”
The actress has also coped with pushy “Bridgerton” fans who are persistent in their belief that she and co-star Luke Newton (who plays Penelope’s now-husband, Colin Bridgerton) are dating in real life, even though she’s involved with another guy. “The maddest thing they thought was that I’d had a secret baby and was hiding it. I would like to go on the record and say, ‘I don’t have a secret baby,'” she said.