Nicola Coughlan has criticised the focus on her body and the reaction to her nude scenes in Bridgerton, saying it was frustrating to see months of work reduced to comments about her appearance

She told the April 2026 issue of ELLE UK magazine: "When I was shooting that series, I was exercising a lot because I knew I had to, so I had lost a bunch of weight - I was probably a size 10 and one of the corsets was a size 8. And then people talked about how I was plus size and I was like, 'How f***** are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?'"

Coughlan said one encounter in a bathroom particularly highlighted how uncomfortable the scrutiny could be.

She recalled: "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...' 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****** boring."

She also pushed back at being positioned as a body-positivity figure, saying it was never something she set out to represent.

Nicola said: "The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is I have no interest in body positivity.

"When I was a kid growing up, I never thought about that. I didn't look at actors and think about their bodies. So, I actually don't care. There's a lot of things I'm passionate about, it's not one of them... That's someone else's thing. It's not mine."

Nicola went on to reflect on her career trajectory, admitting she once feared she might be typecast after the success of Derry Girls.

She said: "I feel very lucky for that.

"I think there was a risk with Derry Girls being such a success, kind of out of nowhere... It was incredible, but you do have a moment where you go, 'Am I going to play this character forever?' I was lucky that Bridgerton came around, because it was really different right away."

She recalled a fan at The National Theatre telling her she was nothing like Penelope Featherington during her run in The Playboy of the Western World.

She shared: "Someone at the stage door very coyishly said, 'You weren't anything like your character in Bridgerton,' and I went, 'Ah, thank God.' It would be really bad if I tried to get Penelope doing all that stuff."

The April issue of ELLE UK is on sale from March 10, and online, via www.elle.com/uk/nicola-coughlan.