Nicola Coughlan is not here to talk about her body.
She really doesn’t want YOU to talk about her body, either.
Earlier this week, the actress (best known for her roles on Derry Girls and Bridgerton) spoke to Elle about all the chatter that’s been surrounding her figure ever since she hit it big as Penelope on the Netflix period drama.
“The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is, ‘I have no interest in body positivity,’” Coughlan told Elle in an interview published March 4. “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.”
To be blunt, Coughlan is considered larger than most mainstream actresses.
She said in May 2024 that she just wanted to do good work and had no interest in delving into any weight loss debate waters.
The star certainly has no shame over her body, either, considering she’s pushed for nude scenes in the past.
“There’s a lot of things I’m passionate about, it’s not one of them,” Coughlan continued in this new interview when it comes to pretty much any body talk. “That’s someone else’s thing. It’s not mine.”
The 39-year-old was absolutely appalled to see a bunch of commentary about her body when she appeared in sex scenes with costar Luke Newton (who plays Colin Bridgerton) on Season 3.
“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,” Coughlan said.
“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?’”
Coughlan has had to deal with this in person, too.
“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.'”
In the end?
Coughlan doesn’t want her work on Bridgerton to be reduced to her size. We’ll wrap up by letting her explain why:
“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.
“It’s so f–king boring.”