Pssst, Mr. and Mrs. Coughlan. Only watch the Bridgerton DVD. DO NOT turn on the television.
Nicola Coughlan, who plays Penelope Featherington on the Shondaland bodice-ripper, revealed in an interview on SiriusXM Hits 1 that she has it written into her contract that Netflix and Shondaland must provide a PG-version of Bridgerton for her family’s viewing.
“It’s literally written into my contract,” she said. “People think I’m like saying it as a joke. I just don’t want to. I grew up Irish Catholic. That’s just not how we vibe.”
It all dates to her mother’s surprise at the show’s nudity upon watching season 1. “When she first saw Bridgerton, she didn’t know it was gonna be so saucy,” Coughlan recalled. “And then you get a bottom, Jonathan Bailey’s lovely bottom, about two minutes into the first episode ever. And she was like, ‘What is this?’ But then, now she thinks it’s fantastic and really funny, and she keeps talking about bottoms.”
Coughlan can’t stop her parents from watching everything. In her other acting gig, Tubi’s Big Mood, “There’s a saucy scene in Big Mood, not Bridgerton level, but it’s in there,” she said. “And I had avoided showing her that. And I did a talk show in Ireland in which she was in the audience, and they showed it on that. And I was like, ‘Okay, well I can’t control that anymore.’”
Coughlan indicates the coming Season 3 of Bridgerton will have many frank scenes between her Penelope Featherington and costar Luke Newton, who plays Colin Bridgerton.
“We did break a piece of furniture while doing one of those scenes,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was gonna be like, but it’s a little bit like a stunt in which they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna do this, this, and this. But then they gave us freedom to like, we had a lot of say in how we did those scenes and what we wanted to do. And that makes you feel quite empowered and you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna do this, this, and this.’ So we felt super. They were actually really enjoyable. I didn’t think they would be. They were great. It was fun.”
Part 1 of the third season of Bridgerton bows on Netflix on May 16, with Part 2 to follow on June 13.