‘Bridgerton’ Stars Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton Unpack Steamy Mirror Scene: ‘They’re Always Breaking Rules’ | Video
Note: The following contains spoilers for “Bridgerton” Season 3, Episode 5
Rivaling the carriage scene from the first half of “Bridgerton” Season 3, Part 2 kicks off with a steamy mirror scene that Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton say demonstrates their characters’ tendency toward rule-breaking.
In the Episode 5 scene, newly engaged Penelope Featherington (Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Newton) find themselves alone in Colin’s new home, and Colin tells Penelope he loves her for the first time. Showing Penelope her beauty in a floor length mirror, the pair sleeps together for the first time, breaking societal traditional of waiting to consummate the marriage following their wedding.
“They’re constantly breaking rules,” Coughlan told TheWrap of Penelope and Colin. “They’re sneaky, they seem like little sweeties … but they’re always breaking rules.”
“They both love that — Colin is a big rule breaker, they like to break the rules,” Newton added. “Something about that era as well — the danger of it — makes it quite sexy — being forbidden. But I think, at that moment, they’re so in love that everything else—”
“Everything washes away,” Coughlan finished.
“The world doesn’t matter in that moment,” Coughlan said.
Coughlan went on to highlight the importance of intimacy coordinators during a sex scene like this one, saying she doesn’t think she fully understood their role until this season.
“I thought 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’ — that feels really stagnant and I feel like I can read that in scenes when it happens,” Coughlan said. “What an intimacy coordinator will do brilliantly is just give you a framework for you to feel safe and free in how you do things.”
Apart from the direction written on the page, Coughlan added that she and Newton, with the help of the intimacy coordinator, took the lead on choreographing different elements of the scene — including what would be done in front of the mirror — which made watching back the scene even more gratifying.
Coughlan revealed in an interview with Stylist that she worked with the intimacy coordinator to ensure she was “very naked” for the scene — which showrunner Jess Brownell noted fell in line with Penelope’s arc this season.
“Penelope is feeling more ready to be seen metaphorically and literally in that scene,” Brownell told TheWrap, adding that she shifts from a wallflower to being at the center of her narrative by the end of Season 3. “Her nakedness in that scene is actually, I think, very representative of her taking a step on that journey, allowing herself and her body to be seen by the man she loves.”
“Bridgerton” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
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