Nicola Coughlan has revealed she used a “safe word” during a choking sex scene in her new Channel 4 drama about toxic masculinity.
The 39-year-old ‘Bridgerton’ star appears alongside Joe Cole, 37, in ‘I Am Helen,’ a completely improvised two-part drama airing Monday and Tuesday, November 16 and 17. The series traces how a couple’s five-year relationship fractures when the man begins consuming dangerous manosphere content.
Coughlan told Graham Norton the project left her physically ill with anxiety. “It is such an unusual project as it is completely improvised and quite a tough subject matter. I felt sick every day with nerves and thought, ‘When can I quit? I want to go home.'”
She continued: “You really don’t know what the show is until you see it, and it is strange to watch it back.”
The Brighton actress found the intimate scenes a stark departure from her ‘Bridgerton’ experience, where “you know exactly what’s going to happen.” For the choking sequence, she and Cole worked closely with an intimacy coordinator to establish boundaries.
“On this, you couldn’t do that in the same way, but we certainly sat down with the intimacy coordinator and said what we were comfortable with,” she told Radio Times. She added that the safe word made the scene possible, though it remained “very intense.”
The opening scene depicts strangulation during sex, a subject now freshly topical after UK legislation introduced last week banned pornography featuring choking. The trailer carries an explicit trigger warning: “Scenes of violence and aggression that some viewers may find distressing.”
Director Dominic Savage said his take on the manosphere deliberately diverges from Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary. “Many women choose not to be in relationships because there can be so many problems. That was the territory we wanted to explore,” he said.
Savage described Theroux’s approach as “more entertaining and you could find it a bit pathetic or laughable even while recognising the seriousness.” His own film, he suggested, centers female experience more directly.
Cole, who immersed himself in manosphere content to prepare, emphasized the careful planning behind the raw appearance. “Even though it looks raw, we planned it so everyone feels safe. Those boundaries also mean you can push the emotion further,” he said.
The ‘Gangs of London’ actor added: “Sometimes, especially in the States, there’s so much red tape before you get to the performance and the heart of what you’re trying to achieve. Luckily, Nicola and I built trust right at the beginning.”
Coughlan’s decision to join the project came without a traditional script to evaluate. “People ask what drew me to the role, but there was no role: I was drawn to Dominic as a writer and director,” she told Radio Times. “I’d found some of the previous stories in the I Am anthology incredibly affecting, and I think the best work you make is when you get on with people and have a shared ethos.”
She finished: “I left thinking, ‘What a nice man’. I would also say that he’s a wizard.”
The ‘I Am’ anthology series has previously featured standalone stories centered on different female protagonists, with Savage improvising each installment alongside his cast. Coughlan’s episode marks the first time the format has explicitly tackled the intersection of intimate relationships and online radicalization.
‘I Am Helen’ airs Monday, November 16 at 9pm and Tuesday, November 17 at 9:15pm on Channel 4.