'I’d love to play a very unlikeable woman that has no redeeming qualities'
Nicola Coughlan is nominated for Female Performance in a Comedy for Big Mood
Photography: Rachel Louise Brown, Set Design: Penny Mills, Sponsor: BAFTA Television Awards with P&O Cruises, Shoot Location: Sea Containers London, Lancôme
- Laura Rutkowski
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Derry Girls has won several Baftas and Bridgerton has received nominations, but as brilliant as Nicola Coughlan is in both, she’s surprisingly never received an individual Bafta nod – until now, for Big Mood.
The dark comedy is about the friendship between Eddie (It’s a Sin’s Lydia West) and Maggie (Coughlan), who has bipolar disorder, and it’s essentially been in the works for 16 years – ever since Coughlan and writer Camilla Whitehill met at the Oxford School of Drama.
“Camilla made me laugh so much. I remember seeing her first short play, and in that moment, I knew she was going to be famous,” Coughlan says. “I was never asked to be in Big Mood. It was more, ‘I’m making a show, and you’re gonna be in it.’ I was like, ‘Right, OK!’ It was never a doubt.”
When Coughlan, 38, left drama school, she remembers roles for women being mainly “someone’s girlfriend, or the woman who sits behind a desk”. She found it difficult to find work in her 20s and moved to London three times in four years, each time returning to her parents in Galway, Ireland. “There were definitely lots of moments where I thought, ‘Should I quit?’ It’s a difficult industry to break into and I didn’t have any connections or money. It didn’t seem sensible for me to keep going, but I got Derry Girls at 30, which was an amazing turning point.”
I’d love to play a very unlikeable woman that has no redeeming qualities
Some of the Bridgerton shoot crossed over with Big Mood, with Coughlan filming one during the week and the other at the weekend. It took her two hours to get ready for Bridgerton, whereas no wigs or make-up were required to play Maggie. “We didn’t want to present mental illness in a pretty way. In the scenes where Maggie’s meant to look terrible, I said, ‘I have
to look terrible. If she has dirty hair, my hair will be dirty.’”
She adds, “I think we’re getting braver with what’s represented on television. There’s certain things that have broken out, like Baby Reindeer and Adolescence, but it also strikes me that they centre on male experiences. I think men are still given a lot more chances in this industry than women. What would we have done without Michaela Coel [Chewing Gum, I May Destroy You] or Phoebe Waller-Bridge [Fleabag]?
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“I hope there’s more roles like Maggie for women to play. Maggie’s not particularly nice or sweet, she’s a bit abrasive. Viewers and reviewers massively struggle when a female character is unlikeable. Let them be terrible! I’d love to play a villain – a very unlikeable woman that has no redeeming qualities.”
Authors
Laura RutkowskiCommissioning Editor
Laura Rutkowski is a Commissioning Editor at Radio Times magazine, where she looks after the View From My Sofa slot, and the "What it's like to…" column, which spotlights behind-the-scenes roles within the TV and film industry. She loves finding out how productions are made and enjoys covering a wide variety of genres. Laura is half-American and half-British and joined Radio Times in 2022. She has a degree in Psychology and a Master's in Magazine Journalism.
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