Nicola Coughlan wanted to be ‘very naked’ on this season of ‘Bridgerton’ in response to body shamers

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — This season of the notoriously racy Netflix series “Bridgerton” is all about Penelope Featherington, and Nicola Coughlan, the actress who plays her, leaned into her sex scenes for a reason.

Coughlan stars as the heroine this time around in Season 3, and she was aware of the conversations being had about her plus-sized body after the first two seasons.

“There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice, Coughlan said, according to Buzzfeed which reported on her recent interview with Stylist. “It just felt like the biggest ‘f–k you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering.”

The actress also said she “specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included.”

Season 3 is focused in part on the relationship between Penelope and Colin Bridgerton, played by Luke Newton.

Coughlan said she consulted with the show’s intimacy coordinator, Lizzy Talbot regarding her scenes.

“You go, OK, what do I want to show?,” Coughlan said about the planning that goes into such sequences. “What don’t I want to show? What’s scripted, and what do I want to add?”

She also recently talked to the Los Angeles Times about filming her first-ever sex scenes, which she said she and Newton ended up feeling comfortable doing.

“By the end of the day, we were both lying under a blanket, not clothed, just chillin’,” she recalled. “We were like, ‘This is why nudists do it.’”

The new season of “Bridgerton” is currently streaming on Netflix.

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