Plus side: Actress Nicola Coughlan steps into spotlight as Bridgerton’s new romantic lead

SINGAPORE – When the period romance series Bridgerton debuted on Netflix in 2020, fans were instantly captivated by its luscious costumes and grand, often risque, love stories.

Based on American author Julia Quinn’s series of Bridgerton novels following the romantic lives of the eight siblings from the noble Bridgerton family, each season traces the story of one couple.

In its third season, which will be released on Netflix in two parts on May 16 and June 13, it is finally Irish actress Nicola Coughlan’s time to shine.

The 37-year-old star broke out in the Irish teen comedy series Derry Girls (2018 to 2022) as the panicky lesbian schoolgirl Clare. She stole scenes in the first two seasons of Bridgerton as insecure wallflower Penelope Featherington, who hides her identity as Lady Whistledown – the anonymous gossip scribe of the Regency-era London society scene. 

The third season will focus on the friends-to-lovers relationship between Penelope and Colin Bridgerton (English actor Luke Newton).

And the pair – who are good friends in real life – are already teasing the steaminess ahead, with Coughlan calling their love scenes “so romantic, so sweet, so sexy, properly hot” in an interview with Extra.

Though her round, cherubic face helps her to pass for much younger, Coughlan is the oldest Bridgerton female lead. British actresses Phoebe Dynevor and Simone Ashley – who played the romantic female leads in the first and second season respectively – are both 29. 

And Coughlan is one of the few members of the sprawling ensemble cast who is not sample-size and has had her fair share of experiences being fat-shamed.

She once called out the publication British Theatre Guide’s London editor Philip Fisher for calling her “overweight” and “fat” in two separate reviews of two different plays she had done, without passing comment on her acting. 

Following the incident, she wrote an opinion piece that The Guardian published in 2018: “Fisher is a professional; he was meant to review my work. Instead he reviewed my body. That is not acceptable.”

Bridgerton fans on social media sites like X have been hotly anticipating Coughlan’s season, in part because it centres a curvy, plus-sized leading lady as sexy and desirable – something that is still rare in on-screen depictions of romance.

Teasers and trailers of the show feature Penelope going through a “glow-up” – changing out of the dowdy, garish dresses her domineering mother favours for more flattering fits, as well as “radically enhanced” hairstyling and make-up.

In an interview with The New York Times on her big makeover, she said: “At the first fitting for Season 3, I got teary-eyed. It felt like a Pretty Woman moment. They were finally going to let me shine.

“It felt soft and romantic and beautiful. It was honestly magical.”

The journey Penelope goes on this season, from being overlooked and sidelined to finally stepping into the spotlight, certainly mirrors Coughlan’s own trajectory. 

Having struggled all through her 20s to book bit parts without ever landing a major television role, she is reaching new heights in her career only now. 

She has since gone on to have a cameo as Diplomat Barbie in the summer blockbuster movie Barbie (2023), and most recently played a bipolar woman struggling to get her life in order in the dramedy series Big Mood (2024).

She revealed in a recent first-person essay for Harper’s Bazaar that while she is “in disbelief that I’m the leading lady in a romance show”, it is “not because I find myself hideous, as some people have assumed when I say that (I’ll have you know, in the right lighting I’m a solid seven), but because it’s not something I ever dreamed of”.

She concluded that she hopes to “show the world, along with myself, that sometimes the oddball in the corner can take centre stage”.

With both seasons of Bridgerton being among Netflix’s top 10 most-watched English-language series ever, the streamer has splurged on marketing the third season. 

A promotional world tour will take Coughlan to New York, European cities like Amsterdam, Verona, Warsaw and London, as well as countries like South Africa and Brazil. It will also take her back to her home town of Galway in Ireland. 

All eyes are on Penelope, as well as Coughlan, but the rising star is more than ready.

In a Teen Vogue interview, she said: “I think a lot of Penelope’s story is about her stepping out of the shadows and into the light, and taking up her space. I felt like I had to do that as well.”