Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan on Weight Loss, Plus Size Body Positivity

Nicola Coughlan doesn’t want the ton buzzing about her appearance.

The Bridgerton actress, who stars as Penelope on the Netflix show, explained that she has no desire to speak about her body or her weight loss.

“The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is, ‘I have no interest in body positivity,’” she told Elle in an interview published March 4. “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.”

“There’s a lot of things I’m passionate about, it’s not one of them,” Coughlan continued. “That’s someone else’s thing. It’s not mine.”

In fact, the 39-year-old was appalled to see the commentary about her body when she appeared in sex scenes with costar Luke Newton (who plays Colin Bridgerton) in season three.

“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,” she noted. “And then people talked about how I was plus-size and I was like, ‘How f–ked are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?’”