- Nicola Coughlan is an accomplished Irish actress.
- She is best known for her roles as Clare Devlin in Derry Girls (2018-19) and Penelope Featherington in the Netflix series Bridgerton (2020-present).
- She is well-known for her acting abilities, and she has also attracted a lot of attention because of her weight.
Nicola Coughlan is an accomplished Irish actress best known for her roles as Clare Devlin in Derry Girls (2018-19) and Penelope Featherington in the Netflix series Bridgerton (2020-present).
Although she is well-known for her acting abilities, she has also attracted a lot of attention because of her weight. Coughlan, who weighs roughly 68 kg (150 lbs), has been subjected to body-shaming comments from both critics and the general public.
The actress has mostly received such remarks during interviews or press junkets promoting her films and television shows.
Table of Contents
Despite all of these criticisms,
she has managed to avoid them and concentrate solely on her profession.
However, there was one circumstance that prompted her to respond appropriately.
On March 1, 2021, the actress appeared on the Golden Globes virtual
red carpet wearing a beautiful pastel yellow Molly Goddard gown,
which she paired with a Ply Knits cropped black cardigan and De Beers jewelry — she also posted the photos on Instagram and Twitter.
Though she looked stunning in the gown, one Twitter user body-shamed her,
writing, “The overweight girl from Bridgerton is wearing a black cardigan at the Golden Globes.
Because no matter how attractive and stylish you are, if you’re a fat lady,
there will always be a black cardigan you consider wearing, then decide against, but eventually wear because you feel obligated.”
Later, when that Twitter user received a reaction,
they went on to defend their usage of “fat” as a “descriptor,” and label themselves as a “fat person”.
When Coughlan noticed the remark, she responded appropriately by writing,
“I thought the cardigan was fantastic.
Molly Goddard utilized them on her runway with the gowns, which inspired the idea, and I also have a name.”
The next day, March 2, the 5 feet 1-inch tall actress lambasted critics who
constantly questioned her weight in a series of tweets.
She mostly requested people to “evaluate performers for their work, not their bodies” in those tweets.
Her first tweet was a link to an article she wrote for The Guardian almost two years ago.
“Hello! So I wrote this for the Guardian two years ago, but I thought I’d post it again.
“TLDR: Can we rate performers based on their work rather than their bodies?” Coughlan wrote.
Hello! So I wrote this for the Guardian two years ago, but I thought I’d post it again.
In the following one, she asked that people stop asking women
their weight during interviews because it is entirely irrelevant.
She also stated that she has been “seeing a lot of interviews from ten years
ago where people go “Oh weren’t the questions so inappropriate!” Sadly, this is still happening.
In her third follow-up tweet, she stated that when asked about her body in interviews,
she feels deeply uncomfortable and sad because she is simply not allowed to talk about the job she does and enjoys.
“It’s so reductive to women when we’re making great strides for diversity in the arts,
but questions like that just pull us backward,” she wrote in the next one.
Then, in the kindest possible way,
she went on to emphasize that she is not a body acceptance crusader – she is an actor,
and she would lose or gain weight if a part required it.
“My body is the tool I use to create tales, not who I am,” she continued.
In her final tweet, she stated that the year is 2021 and that
“it would be good if we didn’t have to keep having this conversation.”
She went on to say that she would like not to be asked about the subject again during interviews.
Finally, she re-posted her Guardian article, writing,
“Anyways, I put all my opinions in what I wrote two years ago and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to say on it so take a read if you like.”
Also read:
Everything About Anya Chalotra’s Boyfriend and Dating Life
Is Adria Arjona Related to Ricardo Arjona?
In 2018, she responded to a critic who branded Coughlan an
“overweight little girl” in his assessment of her performance in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” in The Guardian.
In her piece, the Irish actress retaliated with an essay in
The Guardian in which she criticized the industry’s emphasis on women’s bodies. She’d written
“I hope that more people will talk about our work, our inspirations,
our passion, rather than our appearance. A revolution is taking place, and I want to be a part of it.”
Aside from these, there have been other occasions when she has
freely discussed her weight and responded to them.
Coughlan’s comments are still there, but there are some questions
about whether she has lost weight in order to silence those body-shaming commenters completely.
So yes, there have been no reports of the actress losing weight.
And, as evidenced by her tweets mentioned above, she appears to be content
with her body and does not need to lose weight unless a role necessitates it.
