Nicola Coughlan Felt “Pressure” Filming An Intimate Bridgerton Scene

Warning: Bridgerton spoilers ahead. Nicola Coughlan felt “big pressure” filming one particular Bridgerton Season 3 sex scene.

Speaking to Netflix about the show’s third chapter, which dropped on May 16, co-stars Coughlan and Luke Newton discussed that Series 3, Episode 2 carriage hookup — the one that sparked a huge reaction from fans,

During the scene, Penelope Featherington (Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Newton) get intimate in the back of a carriage after Colin declares his love and gives an impromptu proposal.

While the pair “love” how the scene turned out, Newton said preparing to film it was “a lot.” Coughlan concurred, adding that she was nervous about satisfying the Bridgerton fandom.

“The fans are horny little devils and they used to send us pictures of carriages constantly and carriages rocking,” she said. “So, this has to be both beautiful, touching, romantic and sexy, which is a lot of things.”

The co-stars also noted the significance of the scene for their characters. “In her mind after the kiss, it's just she's messed it up completely and she's like, ‘He will never fancy me. He doesn’t fancy me. It's embarrassing,’” Coughlan continued. “There's no part of her when he gets in that carriage that thinks anything like this is gonna happen.”

In a separate interview with he British talk show This Morning, Coughlan discussed filming her Bridgerton Series 3 sex scenes more generally, revealing that her and Newton’s voices were heard on set.

“Luke and I actually had a lot of say in what we wanted to do and we kind of had ideas about how we wanted things to play out,” she said, “which was great, ’cause we really felt like we were in control.”

Things Got Heated

The pair again recalled filming intimate moments in an interview with 7News Australia. When asked if reports of them breaking furniture during a sex scene were true, Coughlan replied, “Yeah, hell yeah we did.”

“It felt like a really safe space,” Newton added. “There were moments where we could explore the scene and try it different ways and that ended up in a piece of furniture getting broken.”

Coughlan also recently told Ireland’s Today FM that the racy scenes were “liberating” to film, but confessed she won’t be sitting down to watch them with her friends and family anytime soon. “I requested a PG version for mammy,” she said, joking that Season 3 is “going to be significantly shorter” for her mother.