Nicola Coughlan Refuses To Be Put In A Box: ‘I Feel Very Lucky I Haven’t Been Typecast’

The Irish actor has an impressive roster of characters to her name, with even juicier roles to come. She talks to Hannah Nathanson about her commitment to showing up and her refusal to quieten down.

here’s a debate that Nicola Coughlan often has with her boyfriend, the actor Jake Dunn, about the chair in the corner of their bedroom. Is it for the day’s discarded clothes? Is it there to look good? Or is it there to (whisper it) be sat on? For Coughlan, it is a universally acknowledged truth that the chair is for clothes. ‘I’m quite messy,’ she admits when we meet in the back corner of a busy London café, neighbouring diners slurping on shakshuka, while we order coffees (hers, a decaf iced oat latte, despite the January chill). ‘I’m not dirty, but I am messy,’ she says decisively in her Galway accent, which has a slight raspiness to it – the effect of being on stage eight times a week at The National Theatre. ‘[It’s] very ADHD in that there’ll be one thing that’s extremely organised, like colour-coordinated wardrobes, and then clothes also on the floor. But, I try, I try, I try. When you live with someone, you have to rein that in.’

Yet it’s Coughlan’s ‘messiness’ that is exactly what makes her such great company. She talks fast and her brain moves even faster. She arrives apologising for a red imprint around her left eye – it’s from her sleep mask – and we launch straight into a conversation about our favourite sleep aids and what we use to feel secure at night. While she’s not afraid to wade into heavyweight topics – from mental health (she was diagnosed with ADHD in her thirties) and body shaming (she refuses to be a body-positive advocate) – she says that she is averse to small talk. ‘I’m not a good schmoozer. And I don’t love people just talking about, like, “What do you have coming up next month?” It exhausts me a little bit.’

I’m also a little bit exhausted about everything Coughlan has coming up. The actor, who got her big break at 30 years old playing a teenager in the runaway hit Derry Girls and has worked solidly for nearly a decade since, now has a never-ending roster of upcoming projects. But the beauty of Coughlan is that she would much rather talk about things that make her feel and believe in something than scratch the surface with pleasantries.

Luckily, many of her projects have that effect on their audiences. From the 1907 Irish drama The Playboy of the Western World at The National Theatre, in which she recently starred as Pegeen, a scorned barmaid in rural Ireland who closed the production every night wailing in despair (the directors had to give Coughlan a nervous-system reset, which involved slapping her hands on the ground and then on her chest, to help her come down after performances), to the upcoming I Am Helen, the Bafta-winning anthology series that has previously featured Kate Winslet and Letitia Wright, and which confronts the egregiousness of toxic masculinity. There have been moments of lightness, too: a short but sweet cameo as ‘Diplomat Barbie’ in Greta Gerwig’s Pepto-Bismol-pink blockbuster and, of course, a leading role as Penelope Featherington in the enduring Netflix hit Bridgerton, now in its fourth season.

‘I’m not a good schmoozer…it exhausts me a little bit’

Up next, there’s season two of Big Mood, the Channel 4 comedy that takes on friendship and mental health and, at the end of the month, she’ll be in cinemas as Silky, a fairy with an identity crisis in the adaptation of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, alongside Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy.

‘It’s been a busy two years, actually,’ Coughlan says, in what might be the understatement of the decade. Her schedule has involved filming shows not just back-to-back but, at times, simultaneously, having to switch between characters such as bipolar Maggie in Big Mood and ringleted, Regency-era Penelope. Her versatility is astonishing. ‘It comes so naturally to her,’ says Camilla Whitehill, the creator of Big Mood. ‘Even if she’s knackered, she will bring it 100% and be completely present in whatever we’re shooting.’

It’s also meant that she’s avoided the pitfall of being typecast. ‘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?”’ she says. ‘I was lucky that Bridgerton came around, because it was really different right away.’ Fans of the Netflix show flocked to The National every night to see her on-stage, waiting for her afterwards with gifts of neck pillows and drawings for her dressing room. ‘It’s funny, because 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,’ she says, laughing.

The huge success of Bridgerton (the first series was watched by 82 million households around the world in its first 28 days) continued with Coughlan leading the third series, when she finally, and very steamily, hooked up with the third Bridgerton son Colin, known for his kindness and empathy; the carriage scene, in which he admits his love for Penelope, was nominated for a Bafta. This season, they’ve had a baby, who has been expertly cast. ‘The baby looks so like me,’ Coughlan says, squealing with delight, as she digs out a grinning baby photo of her on her phone dressed in an adorable Eighties denim smock. ‘We bonded right away, which was so cute,’ she says of her onscreen offspring. ‘For comfort, he started pinching the top of my boob so hard, I ended up with a bruise. I went to the Emmy’s later that week and I remember people thinking it was a hickey and I was like, “It’s a baby pinch!”’

And, while Coughlan wasn’t a babe in arms when she started acting, she landed her first role aged nine, in a thriller starring James Brolin, and has been working as a professional actor in the 30 years since. Despite attending drama schools in Oxford and Birmingham and plenty of auditions, she spent most of her twenties yo-yoing between London and her home town of Oranmore in County Galway, working retail jobs to make money. I ask whether she feels addicted to the busyness and worries what might happen if she stops. ‘One hundred percent… I’ve been very lucky to be in two shows that have been very successful, but that is not a guarantee at all.’ What, then, kept her going through a decade of being turned away for roles? ‘I knew when I was doing it – the joy it gave me. You can only compare it to [being] in a relationship when you know you’ve met the right person, and just all your instincts go, “Oh, yeah, this is the right thing.”’

Now, the world can’t get enough of her. Coughlan has caught a wave of Irish dominance in culture: she’s been dubbed part of ‘the Craic Pack’ by The New York Times, along with actors Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley and Barry Keoghan. She loved being reunited with her Derry Girls co-star Siobhán McSweeney on stage for The Playboy of the Western World: ‘It was interesting being in a room of just Irish actors and an Irish director, because you could really burrow into what Irish identity means – the good and the bad.’ She first connected to another co-star in the play, Normal People’s Éanna Hardwicke, over social media, when he reached out to thank her for speaking up about the conflict in Palestine. ‘It feels like camaraderie, for sure,’ says Coughlan. ‘I do feel really proud of it, because we are such a small nation and I think, inherently, we are storytellers…The way to do it well is to tell the story as if it happened to you.’

Beyond the Craic Pack on-screen, the Irish takeover extends across culture, from music – with Kneecap and Fontaines DC – to fashion, with Jonathan Anderson now at Dior (Coughlan attended his Paris show with her sister, who has always been more into fashion than her) and Simone Rocha, to whom Coughlan presented the British Womenswear Designer award at the Fashion Awards in 2024. Rocha tells me she was first captured by the actor’s ‘warmth, talent and enthusiasm’, adding: ‘I admire her standing up for her own beliefs and approaching everything with dignity, from her roles to her fashion choices.’

Coughlan has always had a strong sense of morals. When she was younger, she got into an argument with the parish priest. It was around Lent: ‘There’s a thing called a Trócaire box and, every time you think about breaking your Lenten promise, you put money in the box, and it would go off to poor children around the world,’ she recalls. But, when there wasn’t enough coming in, the priest complained it was making the parish look bad.

I’ve been very lucky to be in two shows that have been very successful, but that is not a guarantee’

Coughlan made a stand, arguing that it shouldn’t be about ‘looking good’, but rather where the money was going that mattered. ‘I got into so much trouble with the teacher and the priest. I’ve always had that annoying edge… I’m not a pot-stirrer, I’m conflict-avoidant at the best of times, but it’s stuff like that where I will go, “Hang on…”’

In 2024, she was named as one of Time’s Next Generation Leaders and she has raised millions for causes close to her heart. When she posted a fundraiser for The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, it was shared by Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter and donations tipped over $2 million. After last year’s UK’s Supreme Court ruling around the legal definition of a ‘woman’ being based on biological sex, Coughlan launched a fundraiser for the trans-led charity Not A Phase and committed to match any donation up to £10,000. ‘I was in the era of Twitter when everyone was opining everywhere. I was one of those people, but then I hit a point when I was like, “We’re all shouting opinions and it’s not doing anything effective,”’ she says, her swimming-pool blue eyes lighting up. ‘I’m not a politician, but I can raise humanitarian funds.’

Coughlan didn’t grow up discussing politics with her family, though. Her father was in the Irish Army and his role was focused on peacekeeping missions; he spent long periods away from the family in post-conflict zones, but it was always ‘just dad’s job’.

‘I think I probably saw him and my mum being really decent, helping people in a very genuine way, not to show off that they were doing stuff.’ Whitehill, who says she met Coughlan at drama school ‘when they both had aggressive side partings’, confirms that she has inherited a deep-rooted goodness from her parents: ‘When things are bad, she’s the person I instinctively reach out to. Not because I expect her to fix it, but because I know I’m safe with her. She is always trying to do the right thing. She knows who she is and what she stands for.’

Coughlan has spoken about how raising her head above the parapet and speaking out about things she cares about has cost her potential jobs, as well as causing vicious online backlash. I wonder how she deals with that, especially as she admits that she has a sensitive and introverted side that sometimes makes her want to run away and hide: ‘It’s an odd contradiction, but I’m really sensitive with the people I care about,’ she explains carefully. ‘If I think a friend is mad at me, it will eat me up. I can’t function. But then, when it’s John457 on the internet, I’m just like, “Okay, whatever.”’

It helps that she has a close circle of women around her (‘I’ve always really relied on women’), with a best friend she’s known since all-girls’ school. It was her friend, an occupational therapist, who suggested she get tested for ADHD. ‘I suspected it for a long time, and I think people with it are drawn to other people with it. We just find the conversations more stimulating.’ When she eventually went to a psychiatrist, she was worried she’d brought it on herself: ‘I [asked], “Is this something I’ve done to myself?” Have I just gotten addicted to my smartphone? And he was like, “It’s hereditary,” which a lot of people don’t know.’ The diagnosis has made sense of certain traits: ‘It feels like I got the handbook to my brain that I wasn’t given when I was born. I understand things a bit better now, and I give myself a little more grace.’

While Coughlan’s happy to talk about her own experience with ADHD and encourages other women to get tested, she is less willing to be held up as a body-positivity advocate, especially at a time when a lot of her professional peers are walking the red carpet half the size of their former selves: ‘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,’ she says emphatically. ‘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.’

Still, she dealt with the body-shamers who commented on her nude scenes in Bridgerton with characteristic humour, telling people she was proud to be part of the ‘perfect-breast community’. ‘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. And then people talked about how I was plus size and I was like, “How f*cked are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?”’ But it’s a topic that follows her around, even when she’s not working. ‘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*cking boring.’

Coughlan turned 39 earlier this year and much has been written about the 13-year age gap between her and her younger boyfriend. ‘I think I felt old when I was young and I feel young now. I didn’t know [who] I would be at 39,’ she says, listing off hypothetical versions of herself at this age, from wearing a suit to being a mum. Dunn has also been on stage a lot recently, but they navigate long distance by texting all the time. ‘We try our best. I send him annoying videos all the time and then, you know, a lot of Facetime, but he’s super-busy. Before we were together, I just thought he was a really talented actor. But I love when people have their own stuff going on,’ she says, clearly smitten. And while she says she felt 28 for a long time, it’s Dunn who’s the old man in the relationship: ‘He doesn’t have slippers, but he’s always like, “10pm is bedtime,” and I’m like, “Let’s stay up until 2!”’

‘I understand things a bit better now, and I give myself a little more grace’

While the discussion about the bedroom chair might be ongoing, one thing is for sure: Coughlan loves a home gadget. ‘Oh my God, don’t get me started,’ she says, smiling. ‘My latest thing is a carpet cleaner. You spray and then you suck up the dirt… Love that!’ She’s also obsessed with her air purifier and has two robot vacuum cleaners. She recently renovated her kitchen and got her dream double fridge, which stocks current must-haves: cornichons and Brooklyn Beckham’s hot sauce.

It sounds like a cosy home life, and an important base for Coughlan, who recognises the need to store up energy in order to show up – not just in her roles, but for the issues she feels passionately about. She says fundraising gives her a ‘real faith in humanity’: ‘I just hate the notion that no one can make a difference. That’s not true.’ She’s been thinking about the threat of AI a lot recently: ‘It’s going to become harder and harder to know what’s real, so I think it’s more and more important for us to show up in real life to things.’ It’s why she’s loved pacing the stage every night: ‘It’s a real, lived, shared experience that only the people in that room are having right now.’

The next time I speak to Coughlan, she’s back in Galway, calling from her brother’s old room while The Playboy of the Western World is on a two-week hiatus. She’s wearing a lilac hoodie that matches the paintwork down to the Pantone and slept 10 hours straight the first night, her body exhausted from doing 2,500 steps on-stage for every performance (she wore her Apple watch in her bra just to check). She hasn’t been back since last July but, now that she’s home, she’s in charge of the cooking; her salmon en croûte went down well last night. She’s catching up with her nieces and nephews and has a moment to stop and think. Might there be time for a holiday when the play’s run is finally over? Or, at least, a sit down on that bedroom chair? It doesn’t look like it: ‘There’s this project…’ says Coughlan, who can’t stop – won’t stop – forging her own lane as she goes.

Via: Elle