Nicola Coughlan Spontaneously Burst Into Tears While Filming ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘Big Mood’

Nicola Coughlan said she would spontaneously burst into tears while balancing filming schedules for Bridgerton and Big Mood.

“I’d film one show during the week, the other on the weekend,” Coughlan told AP Entertainment. Coughlan stars as Penelope Bridgerton in season three of Netflix’s Bridgerton, out next month, and as Maggie in the UK’s Channel 4 comedy Big Mood, released in March.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

• 'The Witcher' to End With Season 5 at Netflix

• Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Reality Show Lands at Netflix

• Guillaume Canet Stars in New French Netflix Thriller 'Ad Vitam'

“I remember that I was so tired, I would just start crying randomly,” Coughlan said of balancing both projects at once. “And I would I would be saying, ‘There’s nothing actually wrong with me. I am just very tired.’ I had to learn my Big Mood script on the Bridgerton set.”

The Derry Girls star said the back-and-forth was made more difficult because the two shows are very different. “Big Mood has quite naturalistic dialogue,” she explained. “Bridgerton is very stylized. We’d film one in West London and one in East London. It was just bonkers. It was bonkers.”

Coughlan spoke alongside her Big Mood co-star, Lydia West, who also prepared for a one-woman show while filming the British series.

“I would just look at you, and you were like, the actress I wanted to become,” West told Coughlan. “You can learn your lines in [the makeup] chair.”

Coughlan said the skill was one of necessity. “I had no other time to do it,” she said. “I needed more hours in the day.”

Big Mood will release on Tubi on April 19. The first half of Bridgerton season three will release on Netflix on May 16. Earlier this month, Coughlan told The Independent she demanded the show provide an alternate cut of the upcoming season with less nudity to show her family.

“It’s literally written into my contract,” Coughlan said. “People think I’m like saying it as a joke. I just don’t want to. I grew up Irish Catholic. That’s just not how we vibe.”

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

• A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise

• 'Star Wars': 16 Animated Characters Who Made the Leap to Live-Action

• Power Showrunners: Hollywood’s 50-ish Most Influential Writer-Producers of 2023