‘Bridgerton’ Star Calls Out Public Fixation on Her Body After Nude Scenes

Nicola Coughlan isn’t comfortable with the focus on her body that came with her romantic lead role on Bridgerton Season 3.

The 39-year-old actress, who plays Penelope on the popular Netflix show, revealed in a new interview with Elle UK published on Wednesday that the commentary about her body following her nude scenes alongside co-star Luke Newton was “really bizarre” to her.

“What was really bizarre was, when I was shooting that series, I was exercising a lot because I knew I had to, so I had lost a bunch of weight—I was probably a size 10 and one of the corsets was a size 8,” she shared. “And then people talked about how I was plus-size and I was like, ‘How f—ked are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?’”

The Derry Girls actress had one particularly upsetting interaction with a fan who approached her with comments about her body in public.

“I remember this really drunk girl once talking to me in a bathroom being like, ‘I loved [Bridgerton] because of your body,’” she recalled. “And started talking about my body, and I was like, ‘I want to die. I hate this so much.’”

“It’s really hard when you work on something for months and months of your life—you don’t see your family, you really dedicate yourself—and then it comes down to what you look like,” Coughlan went on. “It’s so f—king boring.”

One thing that “pisses people off” about the actress’ mindset is that she has “no interest in body positivity.”

“When I was a kid growing up, I never thought about that. I didn’t look at actors and think about their bodies. So, I actually don’t care,” she told the magazine, adding, “There’s a lot of things I’m passionate about, it’s not one of them. That’s someone else’s thing. It’s not mine.”