Nicola Coughlan

Nicola Mary Coughlan (born 9 January 1987) is an Irish actress. She is known for her roles as Clare Devlin in Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls (2018–2022) and Penelope Featherington in Netflix's Bridgerton (2020–present).

Early life
Coughlan was born on 9 January 1987 in Galway, Ireland, and grew up in Oranmore. Her father served in the Irish army, and her mother was a stay-at-home parent. She has an older brother, Kieran and an older sister, Clodagh.

At the age of five, when watching her sister performing in a school play, she decided to become an actress. She attended Scoil Mhuire for primary school and Calasanctius College for secondary school. She graduated with a degree in English and Classical Civilisation from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She then went on to train in England at the Oxford School of Drama and Birmingham School of Acting.

Early work (2004–2017)
At the age of 9, in 1997, Nicola Coughlan had an uncredited role in action thriller film My Brother's War. In 2004, she started her career with a role in Tom Collins' short film The Phantom Cnut, a revenge comedy. In the following years, she did voice work in animated series and films, including The Fairytales from 2004 to 2005, Summer of the Flying Saucer in 2008, Simsala Grimm II: The Adventures of Yoyo and Doc Croc in 2010, and Thor: Legend of the Magical Hammer in 2011. She made brief appearances in the soap opera Doctors in 2012 and musical comedy film Svengali in 2013.

After drama school, Coughlan moved to London three times in four years, and each time was forced to move back home with her parents in Ireland due to financial difficulties. She suffered from depression during this period, and received help from her family. She worked part-time at an optician in Galway, and later responded to an open casting call for Jess and Joe Forever at the Old Vic in London, winning the main role of Jess. Her first performance was in September 2016, prior to a national tour.

Five days before Coughlan learned she landed her breakthrough role on Derry Girls, her father died.

Breakthrough (2018–present)
In 2018, Coughlan began playing Clare Devlin, one of the main characters, in Derry Girls, a sitcom set in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the 1990s. Coughlan played Hannah Dalton in Harlots, a period drama television series set in 18th-century London. 2018 marked her West End debut in The Donmar Warehouse production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In September, the Evening Standard named her "one of the Rising Stars of 2018". In December, she competed against some of her Derry Girls co-stars in an episode of The Great British Bake Off. Though Derry Girls was broadcast in January and February on Channel 4, it was after its rerelease onto Netflix in December that the show gained an international audience and popularity.

Coughlan has stated that she auditioned for the part of Robin Buckley in season 3 of Stranger Things, but did not get the part. In 2019, it was announced that Coughlan had been cast in the Netflix series Bridgerton, which premiered in December 2020. Coughlan played Penelope Featherington, a reluctant debutante and youngest daughter of a nouveau-riche family in Regency era London. Coughlan's role was significantly cut back in the third series of Derry Girls in 2022 due to scheduling conflicts with Bridgerton and the coronavirus pandemic.

In November 2022, she appeared in a Sam Mendes produced Audible audio adaptation of Oliver Twist. She starred as Humble Joan alongside Aimee Lou Wood and Lolly Adefope in Seize Them!, a 2023 comedy film set in the Dark Ages. Coughlan made a brief appearance in Barbie as Diplomat Barbie, later citing filming clashes for the short time she was in the film.

Coughlan portrayed Queen Victoria in the 2023 Dodger Christmas special on BBC One and CBBC. She had a lead role in the Channel 4 sitcom Big Mood opposite Lydia West. In November 2023, it was announced that Coughlan would appear in the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special, "Joy to the World" written by Steven Moffat, alongside Barbie co-star Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor.

Coughlan will have a starring role in the upcoming feature drama-thriller Love And War about a woman who must travel to Syria to find her abducted daughter.

Charity and advocacy
In 2018, while Coughlan was appearing on stage in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at London's Donmar Warehouse, she wrote a piece for the Guardian calling out unfair scrutiny of women's bodies in theatre criticism. In the following year, she made headlines again for rebutting the Daily Mirror's comment on her 2019 British Academy Television Awards look: "Not the most flattering". She tweeted "I mean incorrect @DailyMirror I look smokin’, sorry bout it". Following the 2021 Golden Globe Awards, she retorted against other comments on her weight on Twitter.

In February 2019, 28 women with their suitcases led by Coughlan crossed London's Westminster Bridge to demand the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland. They represented the estimated number of women a week who had to travel to England to access abortion.

On 26 June 2020, Coughlan and her fellow Derry Girls co-stars performed a sketch with Saoirse Ronan for the RTÉ fundraising special RTÉ Does Comic Relief. The night's proceeds went to those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In July 2020, she auctioned off an Alex Perry dress and raised €5,000 towards the Laura Lynn Hospice, an Irish children's hospice which provides specialist palliative and supportive care services.

On 12 April 2022 upon the release of the third series of Derry Girls, Coughlan protested the attempted privatisation of Channel 4, posting a picture of herself holding up a middle finger on Instagram and linking to a change.org petition.

Coughlan was one of over two thousand to sign an Artists for Palestine letter calling for a ceasefire and accusing western governments of "not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them."

In 2024, Coughlan raised over $1.8 million for Palestine Children's Relief Fund via Instagram.