Actress Nicola Coughlan is revealing the real reason why she decided to (nearly) bare it all on-screen for the hit Netflix show Bridgerton.
In a recent interview with Stylist, the star said she closely collaborated with the show's intimacy coordinator, Lizzy Talbot, prior to filming some of Bridgerton's steamiest sex scenes yet.
“You go: 'OK, what do I want to show? What don’t I want to show? What’s scripted, and what do I want to add?'” she said. "I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included."
Coughlan said there was one scene in particular where she was "very naked on camera," adding that it "was my idea, my choice."
“It just felt like the biggest ‘f*** you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body," she added. "It was amazingly empowering.”
Coughlan went on to say that she "felt beautiful in the moment."
"I thought: ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how f****** hot I looked!’”
In a since-deleted Instagram post first shared in 2022, the Derry Girls actress opened up about people's seemingly never-ending opinions about her body and why she's had enough of them.
“If you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me,” she posted at the time, as reported by HuffPo. “Most people are being nice and not trying to be offensive but I am just one real life human being and it’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day.
“If you have an opinion about me that’s OK, I understand I’m on TV and that people will have things to think and say," she continued in the post, "but I beg you not to send it to me directly.”
In a previous interview with the Irish Times, Coughlan said that despite all the outside noise and unnecessary comments about her body, all she cares about "is the work" she does as an actor and entertainer.
"Bodies change—if I lose weight or gain weight or I do anything it’s no one’s business," she said at the time. "All I care about is doing good acting and being judged on that."
