Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan Slams ‘Boring’ Conversations About Her Body

Nicola Coughlan has laid out why she’s definitely not here for the discussions about her body that have arisen since she shot to international fame in Bridgerton.

During a new interview with Elle UK, the outspoken former Derry Girls star explained: “The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is I have 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.”

Nicola pointed out that there are “a lot of things I’m passionate about”, but discussions about body positivity are not one of them, insisting that this is something that’s been projected onto her by “someone else”.

She went on to explain that ahead of Bridgerton’s third season – in which she took the lead alongside co-star Luke Newton – she’d been exercising “a lot” and had lost “a bunch of weight”.

“I was probably a size 10 and one of the corsets was a size eight,” she said. “And then people talked about how I was ‘plus size’ and I was like, ‘How fucked are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?’.”

Nicola went on to recall one incident in which she was cornered in a public bathroom and told by a “really drunk girl” about how much she loved Bridgerton “because of your body”.

As the person in question began talking more about her body, Nicola admitted she became deeply uncomfortable (“I was like, ‘I want to die. I hate this so much’,” she commented).

“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,” she concluded. “It’s so fucking boring.”

Back in 2024, around the release of Bridgerton’s third season, Nicola shared that she’d grown tired of people suggesting her nude scenes in the Netflix period drama were “brave”.

“Don’t call me brave. I have a cracking pair of boobs,” she said at the time. “There’s nothing brave about that, that’s actually just me showing them off.”

She noted: “I’m a few sizes below the average size of a woman in the UK and I’m seen as a ‘plus-size heroine’.”

“Making it about how I look is reductive and boring,” she added. “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.”

Before that, Nicola claimed that she’d “specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included” in the latest season of Bridgerton as a direct response to body-shaming she’s experienced in her career.

“There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘fuck you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body,” she said, describing the sequence as “amazingly empowering”.

Read Nicola Coughlan’s full interview with Elle UK here.