Before Bridgerton, “I’d never read a romance novel,” Nicola Coughlan admits shortly after swapping her chunky gold statement earrings for a pair of headphones in Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast studio. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is really steamy. Like, whoa. I laughed thinking about, Imagine me filming this one day. LOL. Could never be me.”

That was nearly five years before she filmed the Netflix sensation’s blockbuster third season, in which Couglan’s Penelope and Luke Newton’s Colin consummate their yearslong friendship during a carriage ride that set the internet ablaze. While she initially may not have been able to envision herself in Julia Quinn’s bodice-ripping Romancing Mister Bridgerton, which serves as the basis for the new season, Coughlan now revels in morphing from an “oddball in the corner,” as she’s put it, to a leading lady years in the making.

“Realistically, love is the most beautiful thing in the world,” says Coughlan, whose eyes up close actually are the most remarkable shade of blue. “I don’t know what it is that it’s seen as something flippant or silly, because it’s not. It’s everything.” Plus, she points out that romance is one of the most-read genres in the world. “The world is a dark and scary place, and I think this show came round and people realized they needed it, but they didn’t know they needed it.”

It didn’t take long for TV mogul Shonda Rhimes to realize that Bridgerton needed Coughlan. After two seasons spent playing Clare “Look at the state of you” Devilin on Derry Girls, a coming-of-age comedy set in Northern Ireland, Coughlan booked the pivotal role of Penelope Featherington with a single audition. “It has to be her,” said Rhimes, making Coughlan the first acting hire of her Netflix era. After locking in the show’s overlooked debutante turned revered gossip columnist, Rhimes and Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen built a vast ensemble of future romantic leads around her. Although the first two seasons of the series were centered on other people’s love stories, Coughlan’s soulful, searching Penelope remained Bridgerton’s beating heart—an embodiment of both the hopeless romance and ruthless scandal that viewers fell for in droves.

Over the course of her most recent global press tour for Bridgerton, it has emerged that Coughlan is very much online. She can rattle off Jennifer Lopez’s bodega order from memory, and she’s open about her devotion to all things Bravo. “Oh, I outed myself so bad,” Coughlan laughs when asked about her internet habits. “I started really enjoying TikTok because I wasn’t on my own algorithm. But that has changed because I’ve been doing press for six months. I’m now, like, every second video.”

That hasn’t stopped Coughlan from lurking in the comments section of carriage scene reaction videos, branding viewers as “horny little devils,” or speculating about the show’s celebrity fans. “The one thing I want to know is, do we think Beyoncé watches Bridgerton?” Coughlan asks.

At this point, the better question is who doesn’t watch Bridgerton. After premiering on May 16, the show earned 45.1 million views in its first weekend on Netflix—the best debut in the show’s history—and the whole thing isn’t even out yet; the season’s final four episodes drop on June 13.

As season three begins, Penelope ditches her wardrobe of citrus colors and poodle-tight curls for a transformative makeover—one driven very much by Penelope herself. “I had someone in an interview say to me, ‘It’s sad that she’s forgotten who she is; she’s a Featherington,’” says Coughlan. “Well, no…. In the first two seasons, she doesn’t want to be dressed like a huge Post-it note. It’s not her. At her core, she’s a real romantic…and she wants to dress in a romantic, soft way. That’s why I really love the physical transformation. Because, yes, there’s an element of, she wants to find a husband, but I feel like it’s her finally going, ‘This is who I see myself as.’”

Penelope’s newfound confidence catches the attention of the eligible Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), who proves a worthy suitor—on paper, anyway. “It’s so important for her to see herself as desirable,” says Coughlan. “She cannot fathom herself through Debling’s eyes. When he first speaks to her and he’s like, ‘You could make one wither,’ she’s like, Me? This is crazy.”

It was important to Coughlan that Colin’s attraction to Penelope, who has long held a candle for her childhood best friend, is not driven by jealousy or her new look. Instead, Colin’s feelings awaken during their long-awaited first kiss, which Penelope views as something of a goodbye: “This is the most embarrassing thing I could’ve done. I have basically begged this man to kiss me,” says Coughlan. “But she thinks she’s destroyed her life. She sees her future as the spinster. I’m living with my mother who torments me, my sisters who hate me, I’ll never get out of this. What have I got to lose? Nothing. I’ll have that one kiss. It will sustain me forever, and that’s it…. And that’s the moment he finally sees her.”

While Colin is soon besieged with sexy dreams of Penelope, she is tormented over whether she’s bound for a secure, but stale marriage with Debling. In episode four’s ball, she watches two ballet dancers soar across a stage in the middle of the room. “Penelope is watching and that part of herself she’s hidden away and tucked down deep, the true romantic, it just goes, ‘No, I’m actually still here. You can’t deny me forever,’” says Coughlan. “In that moment, she just knows, Unless this man can love me, I can’t do it. She has to ask him—and obviously it’s never going to happen.”

A botched proposal from Debling, who senses Penelope’s “affections are already engaged elsewhere,” gives way to an impassioned mid-carriage confession from Colin. “It feels crazy, being allowed to talk about it now,” says Coughlan. “But that scene encapsulates everything that’s wonderful about Bridgerton. It’s got the suspense, it’s got the miscommunication, the heartfelt longing for one another, the profession of love, and then it’s got the sexiness. It’s got this brilliant pace.”

Just as thrilling as Colin’s declaration of love is the heated nod of consent she gives him before they physically escalate their encounter. “Because she’s also desired him for so long,” says Coughlan. “We realize later on, she doesn’t know about sex fully, but she’s aware of her body and where she wants him to touch her. It’s lovely because it’s so easy to see virgins on TV portrayed in a way that they’re like terrified and have no agency, but that’s not the case. The consent is managed so beautifully, and that’s down to the writing and the brilliant Lizzy Talbot, the intimacy coordinator, because we want it to seem like it’s not teacher-student anymore. We’re in this together. It’s the first time that they completely see each other and they’re on a level and it’s like, Let’s go.”

After their Pitbull-scored—and approved!—tryst comes to an end, Colin hops out of the carriage. “It makes me so sad for her that she thinks he’s walking away,” says Coughlan. “Because she’s just so used to stuff going wrong. And you’re like, ‘It’s not going wrong this time. It’s not going wrong!’” Instead, Colin utters a proposition straight out of Quinn’s novel: “For God’s sake, Penelope Featherington, are you going to marry me or not?” Coughlan knows it’ll be difficult for fans to await her answer in season three, part two. “People are going to have our heads. It’s only a couple of weeks. They’ll live.”

Even three seasons in, Coughlan finds it hard to grasp how huge Bridgerton has become. “It’s too bizarre and overwhelming because you film it in such a bubble,” she says. “Then the sheer scale of it and the love that people have for it—I don’t know if I’ll ever take it in. Maybe when I’m 80 I’ll be like, ‘Whoa, I was in that show and it meant that to people.’”

Coughlan, who booked Derry Girls at the age of 31, says that finding success when she did informed her ability to absorb all of the attention while giving her best to the press. “People say, ‘Was it media training?’” she says. “I’m like, No, it was working in retail, where I had to sell face creams and you have to say hi to everyone that came in, giving everyone the freshest version of yourself.”

Her years spent shilling skincare and scooping frozen yogurt linger. “I used to get about eight British pounds an hour when I was working,” Coughlan says. That’s not a lot, particularly in a nation that doesn’t have much of a tipping culture. Actors who hit pay dirt immediately are at something of a disadvantage, she says: when you “get this insane job and all of the perks that come with it at a young age, it would seem like that’s normal,” she says. “And I’m hyperaware that it’s not.” Now 37, Coughlan is glad things unfolded for her in the order they have. “I’m sure if me in my 20s could see me now going, ‘I wouldn’t change a thing,’ I’d be really annoyed, but life experience, yeah, you can’t buy that. You gotta go through it.”

During the final three weeks of production on season three, Coughlan split her time between Bridgerton and a leading role on the Tubi series Big Mood, a sardonic comedy created by her best friend, Camilla Whitehill. “God, it was so intense…. It’s really hard to explain, and it makes me laugh because I said [in another interview], ‘I just kept crying.’ Then it was picked up as a headline. It was like, ‘She kept bursting into tears on set.’ I’m like, No, no, no, no, no. We need context.”

During the week, Coughlan donned ball gowns as Penelope. On weekends, she’d zip through modern-day London as Juicy Couture tracksuit-clad Maggie, a writer diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. All of the crying “was partly exhaustion,” she says, and partially prompted by the profound experience of making this chapter of Bridgerton. “I’d never had such a good partner like I’d had in Luke,” says Coughlan, who may keep a Polaroid of herself and Newton tucked inside her phone case. “Then with Big Mood…acting-wise, that was the most challenging role I’ve ever had to play.” Even though the characters are “chalk and cheese”—a cheeky British idiom for polar opposites—“they’re so inextricably linked in my head,” she says. “Once I finished, I was so spent. I was like, I got nothing left.”

But Coughlan isn’t retreating to the shadows anytime soon. “I’ve actually just gotten a new job that will start right after the press tour,” she says. “So, no rest for the wicked. But it’s super different to anything I’ve ever done, and with some really good people.” (Deadline later reported that Coughlan will lead the upcoming thriller-drama Love And War, based on the real-life story of an Irish woman’s fight to rescue her six-year-old daughter from war-torn Syria.) Then there is the fourth season of Bridgerton, in which Coughlan and Newton will return to christen a new couple. “People are like, ‘Are you sad that you’re not the main love story?’ I’m weirdly not, only because I feel like I couldn’t have given it anything more,” she says. “I don’t have any regrets. I feel like I’ve left it all on the pitch.”