Nadine Coyle has taken a swipe at Irish actress Nicola Coughlan, who claimed she took inspiration from the singer’s accent for her role as Clare Devlin in Derry Girls.
During last night’s Late Late Show, host Patrick Kielty referred to the Girls Aloud star as “the original Derry Girl” and and asked her if she was aware that Nicola had “based her accent” on her.
“I’ve heard her say that! I’ve heard her say that she did…,” replied Nadine.
“She watched YouTube videos of me saying stuff – I was like, ‘You could have watched a few more,'” she quipped.
“You could have watched a few more Nicola. I can help you out. Anytime you need to do another Derry character we can like get together.”
Appearing on The Graham Norton Show back in 2020, Nicola opened up about how she went about preparing for her beloved Derry Girls character.
She said on the show: “I don’t know if people will know this, but there was an extremely controversial incident in the early noughties in Ireland… I feel like it was sort of the first Irish pop culture TV moment.”
The 38-year-old is here referring to when Nadine made headlines back in 2002 when she sparked major controversy when she was 16 years old but had to be 18 or older to compete on Popstars: The Rivals.
This is where Girls Aloud were formed as they battled it out against a boy band to record a Christmas number one single.
Laughing at the iconic moment, Nicola said: “She’d gotten into the band. Her first on camera interview – like the first one to introduce yourself, who you are.”
Then, impersonating Nadine’s accent and interview, performed: “My name’s Nadine Coyle. I’m from Larkhill in Derry. Date of birth 15th of the 6th ’85 making me a Gemini […] what date of birth did I say now?!”
“Then it fades! She outed herself on camera but everyone lost the plot.”
On last night’s Late Late Show, Nadine also reflected on the legacy of her late bandmate Sarah Harding, who died in 2021 from breast cancer.
Girls Aloud disbanded in March 2013 following their Ten: The Hits Tour, but reunited for a tour in 2024 to honour Sarah.
When Patrick asked what it was like to perform without one of the band’s members, she replied: “It was awful.”
“Doing tour rehearsals without her was awful. She was so heavily included in the show because she’s such a huge part of Girls Aloud,” said the 39-year-old.
“Because she was such a huge part of the live show… yano, you’d occasionally look and be like… you’d look for her there and she wasn’t there.”
“As much as it was a journey for everybody there […] It was a good thing for us all to kind of group together and have that experience. But it was hard. Night after night to go through it. It was hard without her.”
Patrick then asked if it was difficult to stay friends with the group after going through such hard times together, and Nadine said: “I think with anything, especially when you work so closely together and you spend so much time together, you’re happy to get away…”
“So, you’d be glad to get away and you’re like, ‘I’m glad not to see yous for awhile.’ And then it’s good to get back together and then it’s a good day.”
The iconic girl band was made up of Nadine, Sarah, Cheryl Cole, Kimberly Walsh, and Nicola Roberts.
