Nicola Coughlan finds it so 'boring' when people make comments on her body size

Nicola Coughlan has criticised the focus on her body and the reaction to her nude scenes in Bridgerton, saying it was frustrating to see months of work reduced to comments about her appearance.

The 39-year-old actress said she had trained heavily ahead of filming but still found herself labelled “plus size”.

She told the April 2026 issue of ELLE UK magazine: “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***** are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?’”

Coughlan said one encounter in a bathroom particularly highlighted how uncomfortable the scrutiny could be.

She recalled: “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****** boring.”