When Nicola Coughlan initially auditioned for the role of Penelope Featherington, she didn't expect to receive an offer so soon after. From preparing for her role mentally through research as well as physical dance and stunt lessons, Nicola truly went all in to embody her character. Hear all the inside details as Nicola breaks down her entire process for 'Bridgerton.'
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00:00 The hot air balloon scene was wild. Luke Newton was living his best life that day as like the hunk with the rope.
00:05 "He!"
00:06 "I!"
00:06 "I!"
00:07 "I!"
00:07 "He!"
00:08 "He!"
00:08 "He!"
00:09 He was loving it. It was great.
00:10 Hi, I'm Nicola Coughlin and this is how I became Penelope Featherington in Bridgerton.
00:14 [Music]
00:18 I auditioned for Bridgerton when I had finished season two of Derry Girls.
00:22 I originally auditioned for Penelope, I... but I didn't realize that she was Lady Whistledown.
00:26 Sorry, spoiler if anyone who hasn't seen it.
00:28 And I didn't have a lot of time to prep, I had like two days, so I just learned my lines, went and did it.
00:33 But it was with a casting director's assistance and I was like, "Okay, but this must be the step before the main step."
00:37 But what I didn't expect was about two weeks later getting a call offering me the job.
00:41 What is wild to me about Bridgerton is that I never did a single chemistry test.
00:44 The relationships I have in the show, the ones with Claudia Jessie who plays Eloise and Luke Newton who plays Colin,
00:49 they're really, really important in the show.
00:51 A lot of it was to do with Shonda, she cast a lot of the actors from a single audition.
00:55 Everyone says she just has an instinct and she feels like whoever's right for the part is who she says,
01:00 and her track record's pretty amazing.
01:02 In the beginning of season one of Bridgerton, we had a historical advisor called Hannah Greig,
01:11 who was an expert in the Regency era.
01:13 We all know it, Bridgerton is not... we're not like aiming for historical accuracy.
01:17 Bridgerton is its own thing.
01:18 She showed us a lot of pictures, I remember one that really stood out to me.
01:21 It was of three young ladies lounging on a couch.
01:24 And aside from the dress and, you know, the really, like, gilded interior,
01:28 it just looked like any three girls chilling out on a couch.
01:31 And that, I went, "Okay, they're not statues."
01:34 People at home chilled and they laid back on couches and they put their feet up.
01:38 I wanted to have that differentiation between her at home chilling out, being herself,
01:42 not having all the eyes in her, and then when the Queen is in the room,
01:45 you've got to hold yourself differently.
01:46 With Penelope, I think I was really lucky because I always love having as much source material as possible.
01:52 We have Julia Quinn's Bridgerton series, the books in which the show is based on.
01:55 So I re-read those a lot.
01:57 I read the fourth book, which is Colin and Penelope's book,
01:59 to get as much of an insight on her as possible.
02:01 But it was interesting because she's a lot older in that book,
02:04 so I had to take, like, you know, anecdotal things of how she was like when she was young.
02:08 A lot of it felt like my preparation was in the physicality of her.
02:11 I always thought of her like a little, like a yo-yo in season one,
02:14 that she'd kind of go out to say something but then she had to pull it back.
02:17 She'd try and be crafty and try and do this, but it was like, "I've got to bring it in."
02:20 And then in season two, I wanted her to have a little bit more of an arrogance about her,
02:24 but misplaced maybe a little bit, because she's like the most famous person in London,
02:28 but nobody knows that she is.
02:30 And she sort of then convinced herself that her and Colin are having this love story,
02:33 which they're really not in season two.
02:36 In season three, I wanted her to feel more grounded, more like a young woman,
02:39 and more becoming comfortable with herself.
02:41 I always think a lot of the mistakes actors make is when you have a big age gap
02:45 between you and the character you're playing, is to try and sort of patronize
02:48 and not see young people as still fully rounded human beings, which they are.
02:52 And they try and play it like a silly little baby.
02:54 And I'm like, "How many 17-year-olds you know are actually like that?
02:58 They're completely with it."
03:00 So I just was like, "She's a younger girl, but I'm still playing her as a human,
03:04 a fully rounded human."
03:06 So I think it was about innocence of her, but also not undermining her intelligence.
03:12 So when it comes to Claire from Derry Girls vs. Penelope,
03:14 I sometimes think of characters in terms of energy.
03:16 Claire is like up here, it's like frantic, frenetic energy,
03:19 and the speech is very rat-a-tat-tat with her.
03:22 It's this sort of internal pace that's just go, go, go, go, go.
03:25 All these old women were taking their tights off and handing them to the driver!
03:28 Whereas I feel like Penelope is far more grounded,
03:30 and she's a real observer and takes things in.
03:32 You can always tell when a suitor is serious about courtship
03:35 just by how he looks when a young lady dances with another.
03:37 They're both quite bookish, they're smart, but Claire cannot keep anything in,
03:41 and Penelope keeps everything in.
03:43 I absolutely adore the dance lessons.
03:44 It's something that's been so central to the show since season one,
03:48 and Jack Murphy has been our choreographer throughout that time,
03:51 and he's the most wonderful man.
03:53 Season one, the first dance I got to do with Colin is called the Siege of Ennis,
03:56 which is really strangely a very famous Irish dance
03:59 that I've known since I was a little girl.
04:01 We were the contrast to the Duke and Daphne,
04:03 with this very romantic sweeping dance.
04:05 We had this sort of giddy, young, childish dance.
04:08 And then I had another dance with Luke at the end of season two,
04:11 and that was sort of inspired a little bit by tango and a little bit back and forth.
04:15 They're kind of turning and they're not really seeing one another,
04:18 and that is really reflective of what's going on in their relationship at the time.
04:21 And then in season three, we have several dances together, I'm really happy to say.
04:25 It's just showing where the dynamic has changed and the shift that comes with them,
04:30 and her standing on her own two feet a little more,
04:32 and also getting to dance with Lorde Debling.
04:34 And that dance, when she sees that a man finally sees her as a romantic prospect and as a woman,
04:39 and I feel like in that moment it does something to her,
04:42 and the whole town sees it and Colin sees it.
04:45 And so storytelling through dance is a super important part of the show.
04:48 It was more Penelope's tone of voice that I worked on,
04:51 the higher tones and the young energy and not a lot of resonance.
04:54 He's already making his way back to you here, to come and take you home.
04:57 And then through season two I dropped her a little bit.
04:59 Sir, your lady whistled down, sir.
05:00 It's over.
05:01 In season three I dropped her more because she has to feel like a woman,
05:04 and like there's a certain amount of grounding to her.
05:06 You do not watch like-attracting notice, do you?
05:09 The days on set are... they're hardcore.
05:12 My pick-up time's generally about 4am, but I will get up like the very last minute.
05:16 I'll shower the night before, I have my bag ready by the door, my water, my script, everything.
05:21 I like to keep my scripts in these like spring binders, so they hold them together,
05:26 and I'll keep two episodes at a time, so I'll know which script we're doing that day,
05:29 because we'll film generally like episodes one and two together, and three and four together, and so on.
05:34 It takes about an hour to get to set, I get there, we start hair and makeup.
05:37 Getting the wig on, doing face masks, doing everything.
05:41 So I have about two and a bit hours in there where I'll read over my script.
05:45 We take Polaroids of every single look to document them.
05:48 Then you go down to set, you do your director's rehearsal and the crew rehearsal.
05:51 We shoot not that much in a day, really, if you like watch the show, it's probably like two scenes, I guess, a day.
05:59 Like it takes a long time to film.
06:01 And then we wrap up about, you know, 6pm, and then you go, you derig out of hair and makeup,
06:09 you get your wig off, you look like a little drowned rat, take your makeup off,
06:12 and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I looked like a Regency-era fancy lady a minute ago, and now I look like this."
06:17 Then I get in the car, I move my tabs, I say, "Film this day, look at my scripts for the next day."
06:22 It can be an hour to two hours to get back home because of London traffic.
06:25 Get in the door about half eight, fall asleep and do it all again the next day for eight months.
06:30 "Move!"
06:31 The hot air balloon scene was wild because initially it was scripted not as intensely as it was.
06:38 It was sort of like, it came up in Ella P's direction, Lord Dublin the whistler away.
06:42 But then they were like, "No, we're going to make this a full stunt."
06:44 I was like, "You are kidding me."
06:45 And we had to like head off and do full stunt rehearsals for it.
06:48 I had to like throw myself onto a crash mat.
06:51 Sam Phillips had to come and he fully rugby tackled me.
06:53 Like at one point he went in so hardcore that his coat stuck to my wig and we were attached to one another.
06:59 Yeah, Luke Newton was living his best life that day as like the hunk with the rope.
07:03 "P! P!"
07:04 I really adored this season that they wrote some funny parts for Penn
07:08 because I feel like she's been such a sad character in a lot of ways that hasn't had a lot of joy.
07:12 And to play her as like this goof and realize how terrible she is with men and how she has these insecurities,
07:17 but they manifest in very funny ways.
07:19 "I love birds as well."
07:22 I adored that.
07:23 So in some of those moments I could be slightly more off the book and like take my time with stuff in a way.
07:29 And I loved doing that.
07:30 Something I realized I do as Penelope, it's unintentional, is I blink a lot.
07:35 I'm like, "Do these like triple blinks?"
07:36 And I'm like, "Where did that come from?"
07:38 I think I don't have a cute crying face.
07:41 You know like Florence Pugh's this really cute like downturn like smile.
07:44 My whole jaw just goes like...
07:46 And it's just like everything.
07:48 I wish I was a cute crier, but I've realized through seeing all the shows in which I cry,
07:52 I'm like I'm absolutely not one at all.
07:54 When we were filming the carriage scene, I remember reading that scene in the books
07:57 and it's super steamy in the books.
07:59 So we knew that it was a big deal because the show is so much about those intimate moments.
08:03 It's a real part of the story.
08:04 Sometimes you see shows and you're like, "Well, why is this in there?"
08:06 With Bridgerton it never feels like that because it's about female pleasure and intimacy
08:10 and romantic connection at a deep level.
08:12 Immediately it was like, "That's terrifying. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know that I feel ready."
08:17 I had a long time to mentally and physically prepare for it.
08:20 I am very, very lucky that I've known Luke for like four, almost like five years now.
08:24 We could talk about it with one another and that makes a huge difference
08:28 because I think if I was going into it with someone I didn't have a good dialogue with,
08:31 I'd feel even more intimidated than I already did.
08:33 What was beautiful actually is that we had an incredible intimacy coordinator called Lizzie Talbot
08:38 who's worked on seasons one and two, but we had a lot of say in what we wanted to do.
08:43 We felt a lot of ownership over it and sometimes people misunderstand intimacy coordinator
08:47 and they say, "Is it like a dance routine in which your hand goes here and you kiss at this point?"
08:51 It's not really like that. We got to do it in a really organic way,
08:54 but in that scene a lot of it was just Luke and I in the carriage with no one else in there.
08:59 It was nice because it felt intimate in a very safe way.
09:03 It was quite funny actually. I do have one funny story about when we were shooting it.
09:06 Our director, Andrew Ann, who I adore, was like, "It's going to go up to this point
09:11 and then you're going to hear me shout 'stop' and you then got to Bridgerton House."
09:14 I was like, "Okay, amazing. That's fine."
09:16 We were doing the whole scene and it's quite long.
09:18 There's dialogue and then there's the intimate stuff.
09:20 We were going and going and going and doing the kissing and whatever.
09:23 I was like, "This feels long. It feels like it's going on a long time and I couldn't hear anything."
09:27 We kept doing it and I was like, "This is going on for ages. I don't understand."
09:32 Then I took it upon myself. I was like, "Oh, the carriage has stopped."
09:35 I was in character, but I was like, "Okay."
09:37 They call a cut and he came over and he was like, "What were you doing?"
09:39 I went, "What?" He was like, "Why didn't you stop?"
09:41 I was like, "What do you mean?" He was like, "I was shouting, 'Cut! Cut!'
09:45 but the carriage was like a little sound booth so we had not heard it."
09:48 I'm sure everyone was like, "What are they doing?"
09:51 So wardrobe is an enormous part of Bridgerton and an enormous part of getting into character
09:56 because you feel so physically transformed when you put those gowns on.
10:00 This season, you start off, they really brought her back to the super garish colours
10:04 and I was very, very up for that because I was like, "You really want to see that transformation in her."
10:08 So I feel like then the colour palette, she goes into this emerald for her reveal
10:12 but I feel like then she goes, "That makes me stand out too much. I'm going to pull back and go into soft blues."
10:16 And then she sort of really starts the physical transformation and the mental transformation
10:21 really then start to blend together over time.
10:24 The thought of doing this season scared me constantly throughout season two in the lead up to season three.
10:31 And then I finished and I was like, "I did it."
10:33 You know, human beings, we're a lot more similar than we are different.
10:36 You know, in season one when she was the shy girl in the corner, watching the boy she liked dance with someone else,
10:40 I remember that as a teenager.
10:42 You know, I remember dealing with sudden fame with Bridgerton, like she was dealing with Lady Whistledown.
10:47 The process of loving yourself, that's still an everyday task.
10:50 I'm not going to say I finished filming season three.
10:52 I was like, "I've figured it out now."
10:53 But the importance of that and the importance of valuing yourself,
10:56 nothing is ever going to make sense until you can give yourself that.
10:59 So yeah, she's teaching me things all the time.
11:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]