Nicola Coughlan is one of the most popular actors in the world right now. After breaking through in Channel 4 classic Derry Girls as the wee lesbian Clare Devlin, Coughlan went global as Penelope Featherington in Bridgerton. She has been hot property ever since.
For example, Coughlan was set for a bigger role in Barbie. But she was too busy filming one of the biggest TV shows of the modern global streaming era to spend much time on the hottest film of last year.
“I wish I’d had more time on Barbie, but it was a great excuse,” she grins. “And even being a tiny part of that world is such a special thing.”
Penelope and Colin’s Bridgerton wedding was one of the cultural moments of 2024. So what exactly do you do for an encore? How about staring down dinosaurs alongside Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who Christmas special, Joy to the World? Coughlan plays, quite fittingly, Joy.
“This was so different to anything I’d ever done. There was time travel and a dinosaur and stunts with Ncuti. It was hilarious,” she says.
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“We were strapped to a rig and there was a bit of polyboard with a face drawn on it to be the CGI dinosaur. I had to stop. It was actually too funny. I couldn’t take it seriously as a dinosaur – but seeing the final special effects, it looks brilliant.”
Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies could not be more overjoyed with the casting. Ahead of our interview with Coughlan, Davies messages Big Issue. “You don’t cast Nicola Coughlan,” he says. “You just close your eyes and hope and pray you’ll get lucky so she shines her light your way. And I got lucky.”
High praise indeed. Happily for us, this most sought after actor fought off intimations from casting directors for long enough to talk with Big Issue as well.
“I’m at home in my spare room / office,” she says, when we get on the Zoom call.
“I’ve just had my time off since we filmed Doctor Who in 2023. It’s been really lovely. I’ve just been chilling… and trying to tackle the spare room, which, as you can see, is still relatively un-tackled.
“I’m someone who definitely takes comfort in being busy, so it’s nice to remember that, yes, I can chill out.”
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Nicola Coughlan remembers the call from Russell T Davies that persuaded her to join the cast. He simply said “come and play with us in Cardiff”, she says.
“He’s such a legend. And genuinely the nicest man in television – so kind, so supportive, such a champion for emerging actors. He has everyone’s back.
“But I said, I know nothing about Doctor Who. I didn’t grow up with it in Ireland. I was very clueless.”
Coughlan always does her homework, though. And for this job there was more than 60 years of revision awaiting her.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted to read the Doctor Who Wikipedia page?,” she laughs. “But it is like a full encyclopedia. Then I watched the first two episodes ever made with my brother, who first introduced me to sci-fi through Star Wars, which was our big thing. It gave me a sense that this was proper TV history. So what a privilege to be part of it, and to be part of people’s Christmases.”
Coughlan also had a pretty good Doctor Who teacher.
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“It was really fun having Ncuti be the one who was teaching me about stuff like Mavity,” she says. “If you’re going to get lessons, get them from The Doctor. That’s pretty, cool.”
Both Coughlan and Gatwa struggled early in their acting careers to make ends meet. They were each close to being forced to give up their dream before winning a big role. And both have starred in huge breakout Netflix hits before being cast in Barbie. Did they discuss their parallel careers?
“The industry is ridiculously small,” says Coughlan. “I had admired Ncuti from afar for years. When I saw him in Sex Education, like so many other people, I thought, god, that is a special actor.
“He has got that one-in-a-million thing. Then I wondered how he would be to work with, because it’s not always the same. But he’s so electric and exciting. So talented.
“He was the perfect choice for this show because he is such a charismatic actor. He’s so himself. I guess the magic of a lot of the Doctors is that they’re really singular talents and really magnetic. He has that. And for him to be a queer Doctor and a man of colour is brilliant. He’s exciting to watch and certainly exciting to act with.
“I love actors that want to dissect the work. And he’s very much that as well. Also, people who have had to struggle, like us, do see it from a different perspective. He really knows the value of hard work and how rare a position it is that we’re in to be doing stuff like this – it was great to work with someone that came from that as well.”
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In the Christmas episode, Joy looks set for a lonely Christmas until the Doctor finds her in a sad single room in a hotel. The story, written by Steven Moffat – back for his first Christmas special since stepping down as showrunner in 2017 – is rightly under wraps. “They really need each other. And neither of them would know or admit that. But they find each other at exactly the right time,” is all Coughlan permits herself to say.
If she has been in great demand, and working hard, Nicola Coughlan has also remained connected to the real world outside of showbiz. Russell T Davies told us how politics is so integral to her.
“We had a readthrough, and then a dinner – and my god, her passion for politics came out,” he says.
“The conversation burnt around that table. She’s a crusader – and then next time I saw her was in the studio, on a set built inside a jungle, in a hut that could tilt her 45 degrees into a dinosaur’s mouth! Only on Doctor Who. And she was beaming with joy, loving every second of it. What a star!”
Nicola Coughlan spent the first half of the year, she says, “living and breathing Bridgerton”, visiting Brazil and Australia to promote the show. But the actor, who previously protested for abortion rights and campaigned for marriage equality in Ireland, was determined to combine her work with activism.
Mixing politics and popular culture can be a difficult balance to get right. Putting your head above the parapet to talk about big issues is not a surefire way to win friends, even if it can, sometimes, influence people.
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“I know, it’s a funny juxtaposition,” Coughlan says. “But the way I view it is that I’m very privileged. I get to do my dream job and travel the world. So how can I give back? How can I use this attention that’s coming to me for positive means?
“Over time, my perspective has changed. I try to view it in practical ways. If I can raise awareness or raise money for an organisation or charity, then that’s something I will do. And people are so generous.
“I put a fundraiser on Instagram for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and so many people shared it. We ended up raising £2m. That’s a practical change I can make. If people come to my Instagram because they like Bridgerton, maybe an aid organisation can benefit – and that’s an easy thing for me to do.”
After a busy year, Coughlan will, like so many of us, be settling down to watch Doctor Who at Christmas.
“I’ll be with my sister and her kids,” she laughs. “The grown-ups will tell me it’s great regardless but I’ll be quite nervous because the kids don’t mince their words!
“But it’s got all the magic ingredients for a perfect Christmas Day show. It’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s touching, it’s really heartfelt and it’s relatable. And it’s got dinosaurs on top of all of that. So, literally, I couldn’t imagine anything better.”
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Doctor Who: Joy to the World is on BBC One, iPlayer and Disney+ on Christmas Day.
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