Nicole Coughlan, best known for her role in Netflix hit Bridgerton, has opened up about being treated as a body positivity figurehead — and she says the label makes her angry.
Across a career that spans Derry Girls, Barbie and Big Mood, Coughlan has frequently used her platform to discuss issues she cares about, from mental health and ADHD awareness to supporting the trans community and calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
But there’s one topic she says she doesn’t want attached to her: body positivity.
The frustration dates back to the first season of Bridgerton in 2020. Even as viewers praised her performance as Penelope Featherington, Coughlan says much of the conversation fixated on her size, with some even describing her as plus-size.
“You know what was really bizarre was, 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,” Coughlan admitted in the April issue of Elle UK.
“And then people talked about how I was plus size, and I was like, ‘How f—ed are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?”
Coughlan, 39, also described an interaction with a fan that stayed with her for all the wrong reasons — an encounter she said left her feeling deeply uncomfortable.
“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—ing boring.”
Despite her objections, comments about her appearance continued, and in 2022 she publicly asked people to stop directing body-related opinions at her.
“If you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me,” she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “It’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day.”
While some took the hint, others didn’t — prompting Coughlan to adopt a more pointed approach in the hope it would put an end to the constant discussion.
“The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is I have no interest in body positivity,” Coughlan told the outlet.“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.’”