Nicola Coughlan has admitted she skipped the sex scenes when watching Bridgerton with her mother.
The Galway native played Penelope Featherington in the popular Netflix series, with her character proving to be a huge hit with fans of the show.
The period drama features a lot of steamy scenes, with Nicola confessing she fast-forwarded them while watching with her mum, who is in her 70s.
Speaking on the Make It Reign podcast with Josh Smith, the 34-year-old said: “I knew pretty well how the episodes went and the amount of sexiness in them.”
“When I showed her the first episode and Johnny Bailey’s bum appeared very quickly into episode one.”
“She was like, ‘What is going on?’ I had to say, ‘It’s not my fault I didn’t write it, it’s romance novels and it’s a really important part of the story,’ but I was still in trouble.”
“Then with episode six I thought, ‘oh my God what am I going to do? It’s non-stop shagging! I am going to be in so much trouble’.”
“What I ended up doing was just fast-forwarding through all the sexy bits and at the end of the episode she said, ‘that one was very short!’”
The Irish actress admitted she found the huge success of the show “truly bizarre”, after it was officially dubbed the most successful series to launch on Netflix.
“Before Bridgerton came out, I knew it was coming out on the biggest streaming service in the world on Christmas Day but there was still a part of me that went, ‘Is anyone going to watch this and I need to get people to watch it.'”
“So on Christmas day, I was going no-one has watched it, no-one will watch this show,” she recalled.
“I just fully had a moment where I was like, ‘it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, I’ve dedicated a year and a half of my life to it and I know hundreds of people put in so many months of their life into it but it is fine, no-one will watch it,’ and I’ve just accepted that.”
“On Stephen’s Day, it started taking off and people were sending me messages saying, ‘It’s number one in South Africa. It’s number one in Canada. It’s number one in India.'”
“It’s so intangible at the moment, because we’re in full lockdown, I’m stuck at home with my mum not doing anything. So when people would send me those messages, you’re going, ‘I guess people are watching it in Pakistan.'”
“I was talking to [my co-stars] and saying, ‘What’s going on? Like this is mad isn’t it?'” she laughed.
Bridgerton has since been confirmed for a second season.
