Nicola Coughlan interview: ‘Bridgerton’

The third season of Bridgerton ended with Nicola Coughlan's Penelope Featherington marrying Luke Newton's Colin Bridgerton, and the actress is happy to confirm that she now refers to her beloved character with her new last name. "Yeah, she's now Penelope Bridgerton, and that's the name on the trailer when I go in — it's quite cute," Coughlan tells Gold Derby. "She's very much in the family now. It's very, very sweet. She's graduated to Bridgerton status."

Addressing the upcoming Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she was nominated for drama actress and drama ensemble, Coughlan readily admits, "I did not think I had any chance in the world [to be nominated]. I wasn't even tuned in. I knew the nominations were coming out, but I was not on my phone. I'd completely forgotten about it, if I'm being honest. I was getting ready to go out and my phone started ringing, and it was my publicist, and she sort of said, 'I've been trying to reach you.' I'm an anxious person, so I immediately thought, 'Something is terribly wrong.'"

The Irish actress chuckles, "It was just such a lovely shock, and it was the day before my birthday. So it was a really nice birthday present!" Her fellow nominees in the individual category make up a "crazy group," and she "feels so honored because it's such a gorgeous thing for your peers to say, 'We think you did well.' That means very, very much to me, because I love what I do." She grew up watching Kathy Bates in Titanic and Allison Janney in Drop Dead Gorgeous, "So it feels silly and mad that I'm in a category with them. But I'm very grateful."

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At the beginning of Season 3, Penelope has "sort of given up on herself," Coughlan explains, and "she's kind of accepted her fate [and] given up on the idea of love, which is something that has driven her since the beginning." But when Colin comes back into Penelope's life, everything changes. "I loved the charting of the whole season and the way that there was something so compelling in each episode," she says. "I remember Jess Brownell, our showrunner, speaking to Luke Newton and I about what was going to happen in each episode. We're going. 'Oh, God! The first kiss happens in Episode 2.' It's so early for the first kiss. But it felt right, and it felt really lovely that that was the moment that he sort of realized his feelings for her."

When fans tell her that they want Coughlan and Newton to get married in real life, she always has to reply, "I'm sorry that he's just my friend, but he's a very dear friend. And he's just the best co-star you could ever ask for. He's so kind, and he cares a lot about the work as well, which I think is always the thing you want. There's nothing worse than being in a scene with someone who doesn't care and doesn't want to be in it, and I think we were both so dedicated to the characters."

Coughlan can't reveal too much about Season 4, but she does divulge, "It feels like a totally different energy this year, which is the fun thing about the show, because it changes so much depending on each couple. So there's a lot of new people in, and they're really fantastic." She confesses, "I've got a super cute baby that is my doppelganger. When I saw the baby, I was like, 'That looks so like me.' It's crazy. I was showing my baby pictures to his parents, and we get on well. I hopefully won't get fired for telling you any of that!"

Also in our exclusive video interview, Coughlan talks about Julie Andrews being an "integral part of the show" as the voice of Lady Whistledown, she opines about her co-star Jonathan Bailey being nominated for both Bridgerton (drama ensemble) and Wicked (film supporting actor and film ensemble), and she reflects on the very first awards she ever won, for playing the tin whistle and the fiddle at an Irish competition.

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