“Bridgerton” star Nicola Coughlan recently told the Los Angeles Times that she came to find shooting sex scenes with co-star Luke Newton in Season 3 to be liberating despite her initial nerves, saying: “By the end of the day, we were both lying under a blanket, not clothed, just chillin’. We were like, ‘This is why nudists do it.’”

Now she reveals in a profile published by Stylist (via Buzzfeed) that she was adamant about going “very naked” for a scene in “Bridgerton” Season 3 as a direct response to the trolls who slammed her weight online.

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Coughlan collaborated closely with “Bridgerton” intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot on her Season 3 sex scenes, saying: “You go, ‘Ok, what do I want to show? What don’t I want to show? What’s scripted, and what do I want to add?’”

“I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included,” Coughlan continued. “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘fuck you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering. I felt beautiful in the moment, and I thought: ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how fucking hot I looked!’”

Coughlan has combated online trolls about her weight in the past. She directly called them out in a 2022 Instagram post that read: “If you have an opinion about my body please, please don’t share it with me…It’s really hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look being sent directly to you every day.”

She later told the Irish Times: “All I care about is the work. Bodies change, if I lose weight or gain weight or I do anything it’s no one’s business, all I care about is doing good acting and being judged on that.”

Coughlan and Newton are stepping into the lead roles for “Bridgerton” Season 3 as the new episodes focus on their characters’ evolution from friends to romantic partners. The actor revealed on SiriusXM Hits 1 earlier this year that her negotiations with Netflix and Shondaland for Season 3 included the production of an alternate cut of episodes that did not include her racy sex scenes for the express purpose of showing it to her parents.

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

“Bridgerton” Season 3, Part 1 premieres May 16 on Netflix.

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