Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan is all for confidently embracing her body — just don’t call it body positivity.
“The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is [that] I have no interest in body positivity,” Coughlan told Elle UK in March 2026. “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.”
She continued, “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.”
Without putting a label on it, Coughlan is still a fierce proponent of self-love and confidence. Keep scrolling for her most impactful quotes:
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Dealing With the Haters
Bridgerton season 3 dropped in 2024, in which Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope Featherington took the lead opposite Luke Newton (Colin Bridgerton).
“You know what was really bizarre was, when I was shooting that series, I was exercising a lot because I knew I had to,” Coughlan told Elle UK in March 2026, referring to the pair’s nude scenes. “I had lost a bunch of weight, [and] I was probably a size 10 and one of the corsets was a size 8.”
Despite the Irish actress’ weight loss, she was subjected to multiple comments about her body type.
“People talked about how I was plus size,” she said. “I was like, ‘How f***ed are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?’ 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.”
Coughlan added, “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.”
Embracing Her Body on ‘Bridgerton’
Nicola Coughlan even requested to film nude scenes on Bridgerton.
“I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included,” she told Stylist magazine in May 2024. “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘f*** you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body. It was amazingly empowering. I felt beautiful. I thought, ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how f***ing hot I looked!’”
A ‘Perfect’ Body
“You know, it is hard, ’cause I think women with my body type — women with perfect breasts — we do not get to see ourselves onscreen enough,” Nicola Coughlan joked during a June 2024 panel discussion about Bridgerton. “I am a very proud member of the perfect breasts community, and I hope you enjoy seeing them.”
Bridgerton’s Simone Ashley Defends Nicola Coughlan After Body Comment
Stop the Conversations
In an impactful social media post in January 2022, Nicola Coughlan implored fans from speaking about her body altogether.
“Hello! So just a thing — if you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me,” Coughlan tweeted at the time. “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.”
The Derry Girls alum continued, “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 but I beg you not to send it to me directly.”
Judge Her Work, Not Her Body
Nicola Coughlan penned a June 2018 essay for The Guardian, stating that she’d rather be critiqued for her work than her physique.
“The focus was on me, not my acting,” she said, referring to her X post slamming a review of a play that called her overweight. “I know I’m not alone; women in my industry are put under constant scrutiny for their looks. It affects male actors as well — I had messages from them — but the vast majority of feedback was from women. Something in our society tells us that women’s bodies are fair game for scrutiny in a way that men’s simply are not.”
Coughlan concluded, “I hope in the future that more people will talk about our work, our inspirations, our drive, rather than our looks. A revolution is happening, and I want to play my part in it.”
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