Nicola Coughlan considered quitting acting before landing Derry Girls role
"Television is in an incredibly difficult position now, because there's more competition than ever for eyes, and it's really hard to launch a new show."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Derry Girls has won several BAFTAs and Bridgerton has been nominated for many, 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 just sort of like, ‘I'm making a show, and you're gonna be in it.’ I was like, ‘Right, okay!’ It was never a doubt.”
When Coughlan, 38, left drama school, she remembers roles for women being mainly “someone's girlfriend or the woman with two lines who sat behind a desk”. She found it difficult to find work in her 20s. In four years, she moved to London three times, 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.”
Coughlan was shooting Bridgerton for half of Big Mood, filming one during the week and one at the weekend. It took her two hours to get ready for the former, whereas no wigs or makeup were required to play Maggie. “We didn't want to present mental illness in a pretty way. People can see it as something very glamorous, and it can be depicted completely wrong. In the scenes where Maggie's meant to look terrible, I was like, ‘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. 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 unlikable.
“I always use the same example of Walter White from Breaking Bad – no one thought to make him a little softer, a little bit more understanding, and to show that he really takes care of his family, so why should female characters have to ascribe to this strange notion? Let them be terrible! I'd love to play a villain – a very unlikeable woman that has no redeeming qualities.”
Coughlan explains that it was important to Whitehill to have a female comedy director for Big Mood, but she struggled to find one in the UK, which meant Rebecca Asher (Arrested Development, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Grace and Frankie) flew in from America. A report from 2014 found that only 8 per cent of entertainment and comedy was directed by women, and female writers are particularly under-represented (30.2 per cent) in comedy programmes, according to data from 2021/2022.
“Television is in an incredibly difficult position now, because there's more competition than ever for eyes, and it's really hard to launch a new show. I think there's an impression that people want to sit in comfort and just watch the same thing again and again – I don't believe that,” says Coughlan.
“There's certain things that have broken out, like Baby Reindeer and Adolescence that are wholly original, but it also does strike 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 if the industry hadn't supported Michaela Coel [Chewing Gum/I May Destroy You] or Phoebe Waller-Bridge [Fleabag]?”
Recently the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Coughlan has long been an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and since the ruling, has launched a fundraiser for the trans charity Not a Phase, raising over £100,000.
“We need to support marginalised groups, especially trans people. At the moment, it's such a scary world for them to be living in. There’s so much space for queer stories and people want to see it,” she says.
“There can be a very small vocal minority that makes it seem like the rest of the world aren't allies to the queer and trans communities, and I don't believe that's true. I think there are actually a lot more good people in the world that are supportive, but they're just not necessarily as loud, so I feel very lucky if I have a bit of a platform to be able to speak up.”
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Authors
Laura Rutkowski is the Junior Commissioning Editor at Radio Times magazine, where she looks after a column called "What it's like to…", which spotlights behind-the-scenes roles within the TV and film industry – from stunt coordinators to costume designers. 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.
