Nicola Coughlan has opened up about a deeply uncomfortable encounter with a drunk fan who began discussing her body while standing right in front of her in a bathroom, an experience the Bridgerton star says made her want to “die.”
Speaking to Elle UK, Coughlan recalled the moment with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance.
“I remember this really drunk girl once talking to me in a bathroom being like, ‘I loved [“Bridgerton”] because of your body,'” she said.
“And she 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, it’s so f—ing boring.”
The incident speaks to a broader frustration Coughlan, who plays Penelope Featherington on the Netflix series, has been navigating throughout her time on the show.
She also reflected on the warped nature of public discourse around women’s bodies, noting that during the filming of Season 3, which centred on Penelope’s love story with Colin Bridgerton, she had been exercising heavily and had lost weight.
“I was probably a size 10 and one of the corsets was a size 8,” she said.
“And then people talked about how I was plus size and I was like, ‘How f—-d are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?'”
It is far from the first time Coughlan has pushed back on the commentary surrounding her appearance.
In 2022, she addressed body shamers directly in an Instagram post, writing, “If you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me… It’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day.”
Her most striking response came during the making of Season 3, when she made a deliberate creative decision to film a very exposed scene as what she described as the ultimate act of defiance.
“There’s one scene where I’m very [open] on camera, and that was my idea, my choice,” she told Stylist in 2024.
She worked closely with Bridgerton intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot to bring the scene to life on her own terms.
Bridgerton has recently streamed its fourth season on Netflix.
