Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton’s Bridgerton season 3 scenes might shock the Ton, but their families will not be among the residents.
“I requested a PG version for my mammy because I am not doing that,” Coughlan, 37, quipped to Australia’s Today FM on Wednesday, February 14. “If you want to watch it with your mum and dad, go for it, [but] having seen bits …”
The Irish actress, who stars as Penelope Featherington, stated the obvious when she noted that the PG cut’s content would be “significantly shorter.”
“Yeah, it’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, that was a big bit we missed,’” Coughlan added. “But, even in season 1, I skipped bits with my mum. She was like, ‘That episode was short,’ and I was like, ‘It was a short one. It was a short one. Yeah.’”
Newton, 31, chimed in that the PG version would “be about five minutes long,” before noting that he’d like a similar version for his parents.
“I don’t think I can do episode 2 with my mum, let alone … I’m not gonna say it,” Newton, who plays Colin Bridgerton, added to the outlet.
Colin and Penelope’s friends-to-lovers romance takes center stage in season 3 of Bridgerton, deviating from the order of Julia Quinn’s regency romance series of the same name. The love story between Colin and Penelope has been brewing in the background of seasons 1 and 2 and is expected to reach a fever pitch in the new episodes.
“It’s just steamy across the board,” Newton said during a virtual fan event on Wednesday. “There’s lots of people within the Ton that are at it. It’s not just us!”
As faithful Bridgerton book readers can attest, Colin and Penelope do have a number of steamy scenes together. In fact, hearing the words “carriage,” “mirror” and “eclair” alone can make certain fans blush in anticipation.
While, of course, the Netflix series takes certain liberties in its adaptation, Coughlan and Newton did film multiple intimate scenes for the new season.
“It was scary that we were friends to begin with because if you thought about doing that stuff with your friend it’s quite like ‘Ooh,’” Coughlan said at the Wednesday panel. “But then we could talk about it and have a laugh about it and [it] ended up quite fun. It amped up more than I thought. It’s like, ‘Oh, wow, we’re doing that.”
The first two seasons of Bridgerton followed Colin’s siblings Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) taking turns in the marriage mart. As Daphne and Anthony romanced Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page) and Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), there were a number of NSFW scenes between the couples.
“No one was sufficiently prepared. I wasn’t sufficiently prepared, and I was there,” Page, 35, quipped to The Hollywood Reporter in June 2021 of his family’s reaction to the racy scenes in season 1. “I think people were grateful for the intensity of the romantic aspects of Bridgerton; I’m not sure how grateful I was to watch it for myself. It was overwhelming. But I think people were looking to be overwhelmed. My family doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by my backside, specifically, too often, but they’ll take it on this occasion because everyone seems to be terribly happy.”
Page later revealed on The Graham Norton Show that his relatives would make multiple “tactical cups of tea” while watching season 1 as a plot to avoid seeing his sex scenes.
The first half of Bridgerton season 3 premieres on Netflix on Thursday, May 16. The remaining episodes drop on Thursday, June 13.
