BridgertonLuke Newton and Nicola Coughlan discuss how their characters aren’t true rule-followers as season three progresses.
In the fifth episode of the third season of the Regency romance, Newton’s Colin Bridgerton and Coughlan’s Penelope Featherington are seen in a steamy scene that breaks a few social rules.
The episode picks up after the climactic fourth episode of the season, which aired on May 16. As the season continues, audiences see the newly engaged Penelope and Colin together just before Colin tells his fiancée he loves her for the first time. He then immediately shows Penelope her beauty in the floor-length mirror, and the couple then sleep together for the first time, breaking the social tradition of waiting until after the wedding.
“They’re breaking the rules all the time,” Coughlan, 37, told TheWrap about the characters’ first meeting. “They’re sneaky, they act like little sweets… but they always break the rules.”
“They both love it – Colin’s a big rule breaker, they like to break the rules,” added Newton, 31. “There’s something about that period too – the danger of it – that makes it quite sexy – that it’s forbidden. But I think at that moment they are so in love that everything else…”
“Everything washes away,” Coughlan concluded. “The world doesn’t matter at that moment.”
Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in the third season premiere of “Bridgerton.”.
Liam Daniel/Netflix
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She went on to explain that while filming the final season, she gained a better understanding of intimacy coordinators and their importance to the set. They make the actors “feel safe and free in how [they] doing things,” she said.
“I was like, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want it to be like a dance routine where they tell you to kiss for this many seconds and touch for this many seconds’ — it’s really stagnant, and I feel like you can read that in the scenes when it’s happen,” Coughlan said.
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Luke Newton as Colin Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington in season three, episode two of “Bridgerton.”.
Liam Daniel/Netflix
Season showrunner Jess Brownell told TheWrap that Coughlan’s character is changing from a sidekick to the center of his own story. “Penelope feels more ready to be seen metaphorically and literally in that scene,” Brownell said.
“Her nudity in that scene is actually, I think, very representative of her step on that path, allowing herself and her body to be seen by the man she loves,” she added.
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Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlan in London on April 12, 2024.
StillMoving.Net for Netflix/Shutterstock
The couple also exclusively told PEOPLE that they wanted their steamy scenes to be “authentic” to their characters.
“We just wanted to honor that because people love their relationship so much and we wanted to keep it really true,” Newton said.
Coughlan added, “I think what’s really beautiful about this season is that the intimacy feels very real,” noting that “they can be intimate together in a very real and beautiful way, and I think that’s what makes it so impressive.”
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Source: HIS Education