How Nicola Coughlan Became Penelope Featherington of 'Bridgerton' 🐝 | Teen Vogue

the hot air balloon scene was wild Luke Newton was living his best life that day as like the hunk with the Rope he was loving it it was great hi I'm Nicola Carin and this is how I became Penelope featherington and Bridgeton I auditioned for Bridger tin when I had finished season two of dairy girls I originally auditioned for Penelope I but I didn't realize that she was Lady whistle down sorry spoiler if anyone who hasn't seen it and I didn't have a lot of time to prep I had two days so I just learned my lines went and did it but it was with a casting director's assistant and I was okay this must be the step before the the main step what I didn't expect was about 2 weeks later getting a call offering me the job what has wild to me about bridgesan is that I never did a single chemistry test the relationships I have in the show the ones with Claudia Jesse who plays Eloise and Luke Newton who plays Colin they're really really important in the show a lot of it was to do with Shonda she C Cast a lot of the actors from a single audition everyone says she just has an instinct and she feels like whoever is right for the part is who she says and her track record is pretty amazing in the beginning of season one of Bridgeton we had a historical adviser called Hannah Greg who was an expert in the Regency Era we all know what Bridgeton is not we're not like aiming for historical accuracy Bridgeton is its own thing she showed us a lot of pictures I remember one that really stood out to me it was of three young ladies lounging on a couch and aside from the dress and you know the really like gilded interior it just looked like any three girls chilling out on a couch and that I went okay they're not statues people at home chilled and they laid back on couches and they put their feet up I wanted to have that differentiation between her at home chilling out being herself not having all the eyes in her and then when the queen is in the room you've got to hold yourself differently well with Penelope I think I was really lucky because I always love having as much Source material as possible we have Julia Quinn's Bridget and series The Books which the show is based on so I reread those a lot I read the fourth book which is Colin Penelope book to get as much of an Insight on her as possible but it was interesting cuz she's a lot older in that book so I had to take like you know anecdotal things of how she was like when she was young a lot of it felt like my preparation was in the physicality of her I always thought of her like a little like a yo-yo in season one that she'd kind of go out to say something but then she had to pull it back she try and be crafty and try and do this but it was like I've got to bring it in and then in season 2 I wanted her to have a little bit more of an arrogance about her but misplaced maybe a little bit because she's like the most famous person in London nobody knows that she is and she sort of then convinced herself that her and Colin are having this love story which they're really not in in season 2 but in season 3 I wanted drift to feel more grounded more like a young woman and more becoming comfortable with herself I always think a lot of the mistakes actors make is when you have a big age gap between you and the character you're playing is to try and sort of patronize and not see young people as still fully rounded human beings which they are and they try and play it like a silly little baby and I'm like like how many 17-year-olds you know are actually like that they're completely with it so I just was like she's a younger girl but I'm still playing her as a human a fully rounded human so I think it was about innocence of her but also not undermining her intelligence so when it comes to like CLA from Dary girls versus Penelope I sometimes think of characters in terms of energy like Claire is like up here it's like frantic frenetic energy and it's you know the speech is very like ratatatat with her and it's this sort of internal Pace that's just go go go go go all these old women were ticking their tights off and handing them to the driver whereas I feel like Penelope is far more grounded and is a real Observer and takes things in I can always tell when a sutor is serious about courtship just by how he looks when a young lady dances with another they're both quite bookish they're smart but Claire cannot keep anything in and Penelope keeps everything in I absolutely adore the dance lessons it's something that's been so Central to the show since season one and Jack Murphy has been our choreographer throughout that time and he's the most wonderful man season one the first dance I got to do with Colin is called The Siege of Enis which is really strangely a very famous Irish dance that I've known since I was a little girl we were the contrast to the Duke and Daphne who had this very romantic sweeping dance we had this sort of giddy young childish dance and then you know I had another dance with Luke at the end of season 2 and that was sort of inspired a little bit by Tango and a little bit back and forth they're kind of turning and they're not really seeing one another and that is really reflective of what's going on in their relationship at the time and then in season 3 we have several dances together I'm really happy to say it's just showing where the dynamic has changed and the shift that comes with them and her standing on her own two feet a little more and also getting to dance with Lord debling and that dance when she sees that a man finally sees her as a romantic Prospect and as a woman and I feel like in that moment it does something to her and the whole T sees it and Colin sees it and so storytelling through dance is a super important part of the show it was more Penelope's tone of voice that I worked on the higher tones and the young energy and not a lot of resonance he's already making his way back to you here to come and take you home and then through season two I dropped her a little bit so you're lady whistle down sir it's over in season 3 I dropped her more because she has to feel like a woman and like there's a certain amount of grounding to her you do not much like attracting notice D the days on set are they're hardcore my pickup time is generally about 4:00 a.m. but I will get up like the very last minute I'll shower the night before I have my bag ready by the door my water my script everything I like to keep my scripts in these like spring binders so they hold them together and I'll keep two episodes at a time so I'll know which script we're doing that day we film generally like episodes 1 and two together and three and four together and so on takes about an hour to get to set I get there we start hair and makeup getting the wig on doing face masks doing everything so I have about two and a bit hours in there where I'll read over my script we'd take Polaroids of every single look to document them then you go down to set you do your director's rehearsal and the crew rehearsal we shoot not that much in a day really if you like watch the show it's probably like two scenes I guess a day like it takes a long time to film and then we wrap up about you know 6:00 p.m. and then you go you you D out of hair makeup you get your wig off you look like a little drowned rat take your makeup off and you're like oh my gosh I look like a Regency Era fancy lady a minute ago and now I look like this then I get in the car I I move my tabs I've say film this day look at my scripts for the next day it could be an hour to two hours to get back home because of London traffic get in the door about half eight fall asleep and do it all again the next day for 8 months the hot air balloon scene was wild because initially it was scripted not as intensely as it was it was sort of like it came in Penelope's Direction Lord debling a whis away but then they were like no we're going to make this a full stunt I was like you are kidding me and we had to like head off and do full stunt rehearsals for it I had to like throw myself onto a crash mat Sam Phillips had to come and he fully rugby tackled me like at one point he went in so hardcore that his coat stuck to my wig and we were attached to one another yeah Luke Newton was living his best life that day as like the hunk with the Rope I really adored this season that they wrote some funny parts for pen because I feel like she's been such a sad character in a lot of ways that hasn't had a lot of joy and to play her as like this goof and realize how terrible she is with men and how she has these insecurities but they manifest in very funny ways I love birds as well I adored that so in some of those moments I could be slightly more off the book and like take my time with stuff in way and I I loved doing that something I realized I I do as Penelope it's unintentional it's like blink a lot I'm like do these like triple blinks and I'm like where did that come from I think I don't have a cute crying face you know like Florence Pew has this really cute like downturn like smile my whole jaw just goes like and it's just like everything yeah I wish I was a cute crier but I've realized through seeing all the shows on which I cry I'm like I'm absolutely not one at all when we were filming The Carriage scene I remember reading that scene in the books and it's super steamy in the books so we knew that it was a big deal because the show is so much about those intimate moments it's a real part of the story sometimes you see shows and you're like well why is this in there with Bridgerton it never feels like that because it's about female pleasure and intimacy and romantic connection at a deep level immediately was like that's terrifying I don't know if I can do it I don't know that I feel ready so I had a long time to mentally like and physically prepare for it I am very very lucky that I've known Luke for like four almost like five years now we could talk about it with one another and that makes a huge difference because I think if I was going into with someone I didn't have a good dialogue with I'd feel even more intimidated than I already did what was beautiful actually is that we had an incredible intimacy coordinator called Lizzy talber who's worked on seasons 1 and two but we had a lot of say in what we wanted to do we felt a lot of ownership over it and sometimes people misunderstand intimacy coordin and they say you know is it like a dance routine in which like your hand goes here and you kiss at this point it's not really like that we got to do it in a really organic way but in that scene a lot of it was just Luke and I in the carriage with no one else in there so it was it was nice because it felt intimate in a in a very safe way it was quite funny actually I do have one funny story about when we were shooting it our director Andrew an who I adore was like you know it's going to go up to this point and then you're going to hear me shout stop and you then got to Bridgeton house and I was like okay amazing that's fine so we were doing the whole scene and it's quite long there's dialogue and then there's the intimate stuff and we were going and going going and doing the kissing and whatever and I was like this feels long like this feels like it's going on a long time and I couldn't hear anything so we sort of kept doing it and I was like this is going from for ages like I don't understand and then I just sort of like took it to myself I was like oh the carriage is stop you know I was like in character but I was like okay they call cut and he came over and he was like what were you doing we went what he's like why didn't you stop and I was like what do you mean he was like I was shouting cut cut but the carage just like a little sound booth so we had not heard it I sure everyone was like what are they doing so word was an enormous part of Bridgeton an enormous part of getting into character cuz you feel so physically transformed when you put those BRS on this season like you start off they really brought her back to like the super garish colors and I was very very up for that cuz I was like you really want to see that transformation in her so I feel like then the the color palette she goes into this Emerald for her reveal but I feel like then she goes that makes me stand up too much I'm going to pull back and go into soft blues and then she sort of really starts the physical transformation and the mental transformation really then start to to blend together over time the thought of doing this season scared me constantly throughout season seon 2 in the lead up to season 3 and then I finished and I was like I did it you know human beings were a lot more similar than we are different you know in season 1 when she was the shy girl in the corner watching the boy she like dance with someone else I remember that as a teenager you know I remember like dealing with sudden Fame with Bridgeton like she was dealing with Lady whistledown the process of loving yourself like that's still an everyday task I'm not going to say I finished filming season I was like I've figured it out now but the importance of that and the importance of valuing yourself nothing is ever going to make sense until you can give yourself that so yeah she's teaching me things all the time [Music]

Channel: Teen Vogue

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Keywords: bridgerton, bridgerton audition, bridgerton cast, bridgerton chemistry, bridgerton costumes, bridgerton main cast, bridgerton season 1, bridgerton season 2, bridgerton season 3, character study, lady whistledown, luke newton, nicola coughlan, nicola coughlan bridgerton, nicola coughlan luke newton, penelope featherington, teen vogue, tv and entertainment

Id: wWK_t0lLnTU

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024