Heartbreaking Details About Bridgerton Star Nicola Coughlan

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 feel 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, concerned 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.

Nicola Coughlan also had to deal with being shamed for another reason — her age. In real life, Coughlan was 30 years old when she was cast at Clare on "Derry Girls," and she definitely got some guff for playing a teenager onscreen. "It's super funny to me to see that [discourse] because I've never hidden my age," she said during a Teen Vogue interview.

The actress continued, "In acting it's all about suspension of disbelief. I always use the same comparison: Ian McKellen isn't a wizard. I'm not a 19-year-old aristocrat from the 19th century. It's all made up." She seems to find the controversy amusing — after all, she proved quite convincing playing a teen who must deal with the turbulent times in which she has been plunged. Coughlan remains grateful that she's been given the opportunity, however, to have the kind of career she has now. "I am so lucky I get to do [this career], because pretty much my whole 20s, I didn't get to do it."

One of the most harrowing experiences Nicola Coughlan had was a backstage incident of sexual harassment she went through as a teenager. The actress talked about the situation in a post on X (as quoted by The Irish News). In the tweet, she revealed that a respected older director suggested she take her clothing off when she approached him for advice while preparing for an acting competition. 

"I had a chat with him before about what the competition would entail and he told me that if I really wanted to impress him, I should perform naked. I was a kid, but no woman of any age should be spoken to by a man in a position of power, ever. Trust me, I have a lot worse stories than that," she said. Coughlan hasn't remarked upon the situation since.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

One wouldn't think that the set of the passionate but not usually physically demanding "Bridgerton" would be dangerous, but Nicola Coughlan suffered several accidents while working on the production. 

Early in the making of Season 1, while Coughlan was still figuring out how she felt about Penelope, she was wearing a pair of heels she simply couldn't walk properly in. "I was sort of walking along during a scene and then all of a sudden, with my corset and everything, I had no sort of central strength, so I completely toppled over and landed on the ground," she said during an appearance on the British chat show "This Morning." While the costume didn't make Coughlan cry, she admitted that she had taken a tumble two more times after that incident.  

During one of the falls, her lack of luck with the silks and bows of the era nearly affected the safety of her co-star. "The third time I was carrying a parasol which, held in the wrong hands, is a deadly weapon. So I fell forward really quickly and stabbed Claudia Jessie [who plays Eloise Bridgerton] in her hand and it drew blood. And that was my first day!" The good news is, Coughlan and Jessie are still friends, and Penelope lost her heels after a production meeting.

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.

The first major triumph of Nicola Coughlan's career was landing "Derry Girls," but that happened in the wake of a deep tragedy: Her father passed away five days before she booked the part. "He sadly didn't know I ever got it. It's sad he never got to see it," she said during an appearance on the podcast Castaway. Coughlan acknowledges that while she feels privileged and lucky to be in the position she's in, she still wishes he were there for the big moments. "The first time we were at the BAFTAs and we won these incredible awards, you know, there's always that tinge of sadness he's not here to see it."

Coughlan, of course, misses her dad for reasons that go far beyond her time on the red carpet. "I've got these three little plants in my apartment that I've been keeping alive, and I'm like, I'd love to just tell my dad. He was really green-fingered. At the end of the day, what most of us want is to just make our parents proud."

It might be every actor's desire to stay booked and busy, but Nicola Coughlan wore herself out working simultaneously on not just "Bridgerton" but "Big Mood," a Channel 4 hit comedy series which centers on a pair of best friends who find themselves being torn apart by the pressures of adult life. 

 "I was so tired I'd just start crying randomly," she told AP Entertainment. "And I would be saying 'there's nothing actually wrong with me, I just am very tired.'" She confessed that she'd be learning scripts for "Big Mood" while working on "Bridgerton" and tape one over the week and the other during the weekend. Left with little time to prepare for both shows, she did what she could with whatever time she could eke out. "I needed more hours in the day," she confessed. 

Coughlan is going to have plenty of busy days ahead of her. "Big Mood" has been renewed for a second series and Penelope is expected to appear in Season 5 of "Bridgerton." On top of that, Coughlan has also appeared in a variety of West End shows.

In a wild twist of fate, Nicola Coughlan came dangerously close to meeting an untimely end when a concrete block crashed through the ceiling of her bathroom in her rental home, landing in her shower. The scariest part of the story is that Coughlan had just stepped out of said shower when the incident happened.

"So last night a concrete block crashed through my ceiling seconds after I'd been standing under it. Portico [the name of the property company from which she was renting] are now refusing to send an engineer in to check that the building is structurally sound before I go back in and told me if I want one I have to pay for it," she said on X at the time (as quoted by The Telegraph). 

The agency posted to Coughlan's X thread that they were sending a senior officer to look into the matter, but later she replied, "I was there for the entire duration of the handyman's visit, he looked in my loft and cleaned my bath. He is not a qualified engineer and therefore not qualified to tell me if the property is safe or not." She said she was too frightened to go back to the rental. While the interplay took place in public, any further settlement regarding the actress's living situation was solved in private.

Nicola Coughlan has confessed that she coped with a depressive episode during the most dire days of her career. She described enduring that incident to Glamour. It occurred before she grabbed a role in "Derry Girls." Coughlan had moved from England back home to Ireland for the third time when she ran out of money and suffered through an audition drought. "I couldn't get out of bed. I felt like I failed at everything. I felt like I had nothing, and I had let my family down, You think all these terrible things about yourself and that was made worse because I had taken out a loan and I just kept thinking about being in financial debt."

She says her friends and family were quite supportive and slowly she broke out of her depressive spiral. Coughlan specifically remembers her sister coming over to pull her out of bed and get her moving. But relying on her parents financially as an adult took its toll. "If I wanted to go for coffee, I needed to ask my parents. I was like, 'I'm 28, I'm too old to have done this!'" She promptly began avoiding people, including close friends, to avoid dragging them down into her misery.

During that long nightmare that Nicola Coughlan endured during her salad days, she nearly gave up the notion of being a professional actress entirely. "I remember thinking, 'Why am I here? I'm here to do acting, but I can't even do the auditions.' I'd hear stories about people who landed big Hollywood roles because their uncle knew a famous producer or whatever, and I definitely got super resentful," she told Harper's Bazaar. She had a day job at an optician's office for a time, but what she really wanted to do was act. 

Fortunately, she held on long enough to land her big break — a leading role in a production of "Jess and Joe Forever," a play that thrust her into a major role on the London stage. She snagged the part of Jess thanks to an open audition call on Twitter. What keeps her going even on the hardest days of her life? Her deep love of performing. "I couldn't have kept going if I didn't have such an insane love for acting. I knew it was worth fighting for. I know that might sound very trite, but that's just the truth." And now, years later, her star has only just begun to shine in the Hollywood sky.