Nicola Coughlan says she ‘couldn’t believe’ when Ryan Gosling kissed her

The gracious gesture was all the more flattering for the Galway star as she confirms she was left speechless when she was onset on Barbie for the first time and witnessed a shirtless Ryan preparing for his memorable scenes in the hit movie.

“To be on that set, with all of those people, “ exclaims Nicola (37). “The day I went for a costume fitting Ryan Gosling was there shirtless.

“I met him at the premiere. I was too intimidated that day (on set) to speak to him. At the premiere he shook my hand, gave me a kiss on the cheek, went ‘you’re great in the movie’. I thought, ‘you don’t need to do this, you’re Ryan Gosling, you don’t need to talk to me’.

“We were all lined up backstage, it felt like school assembly. Everyone was talking. ‘Will Ferrell, stand there’’ What am I doing here?!’”

Nicola, who has also starred in Derry Girls and Bridgerton, explained to presenters Cat Deeley and Ben Shepherd on ITV’s This Morning earlier today that she was thrilled to get the role of ‘Barbie Diplomat’.

“Insane. I love Gretta Gerwig (Barbie director) so much. I loved her since Frances Ha. Everything she does is magic,” she maintains.

“I auditioned for it (Barbie) and it was filming, it was going to cut into Bridgerton filming. So they were ‘we don’t think you can do anything on this movie, but would you like to do a tiny bit?’. ‘Yes, that’s crazy, you don’t even need to ask!’

“It’s (got) such an incredible producer Margot (Robie) is as well. She is an amazing actor obviously, but then she’s so smart. That movie wouldn’t have happened if it was for her. It was her production company, Lucky Chap, they brought it to Mattel (the company which makes the dolls) and it was amazing.”

She is up for doing Barbie 2 if it happens.

“I wrote Gretta an email and was going ‘if you want me to make the tea on the set, of course I will be there’. If she ever asks me to do anything I will be there in a heartbeat,” she smiles.

Tonight Nicola will be seen in new Channel 4 series Big Move.

“It’s written by one of my best friends, Camilla Whitehill,” she explains. “ It’s a comedy, but it’s a dark comedy. There’s two girls, Maggie and Eddie. They’re best friends, they’re about to turn 30.

“They are sort of at a funny stage of their life, where do they go and get married and have kids, or what’s happening with their careers. It’s that strange adjustment period, and then my character Maggie has bipolar disorder. So it does get quite dark, just as a warning for people.

“We shot it in seven weeks, which is no time whatsoever, and literally you’re playing her very very depressed, and in the next scene she’s manic.

“We shot literally the opening scene and the finale scene back to back one of the days.”

She will also be seen soon in the third series of Bridgerton, in which she plays Penelope Featherington and who falls madly in love with Colin Bridgerton.

“It’s really exciting, it’s a massive challenge,” she points out. “ I shot Bridgerton and Big Move at the same time for three weeks, so filmed one in east London and one in west London, and my head was just gone completely. But I had the best time filming it.

“Luke (Newton, who plays Colin) is incredible, it’s so romantic.

“This season is so romantic; they’ve really upped their game. I loved season one and two, but when we got these scrips I was like ‘oh wow, ok, I’m very excited’.”

She confirms there are several raunchy sex scenes.

“I think we’ve won the sauciness,” she chuckles. “It’s really nervewracking (the sex scenes) , but thankfully I’ve known Luke for four years and he’s a super nice guy.

“Worse at the beginning and better in reality, because we can have a laugh about it. It was quite liberating and quite fun to do. I wouldn’t have thought that before. We had an amazing intimacy coordinator, Lucy Talbot, who was there. She treats it like a stunt. We had a lot of say in what we wanted to do as well.

“They are kind of like a stunt co-ordinator for sexy scenes. It’s sort of like ‘what are you comfortable with?’. But Luke and I had a lot of say in what we wanted to do and we kind of had ideas in what we wanted to play out, which was great, because we really felt we were in control.”

Bridgerton’s first series came out in 2020, just in the first period of lockdown.

“It was really really strange, it was such an adjustment,” she recalls. “Because it sort of came out, and we heard all the figures, 82 million people in week one’, and you’re going ‘I can’t compute that’, and then going back out into the world being so much more recognizable. You’d be going ‘oh, ok, right this is quite a big show’.”

She’s also known for playing Clare Devlin in the award winning Derry Girls, in which she had to put on a northern Irish accent and based on a certain pop star.

“Derry Girls was Nadine Coyle, that was my point of reference,” she admits. “

For Bridgerton I did a lot of voiceover when I was a kid. So I did a lot of cartoons and stuff. There was no demand for Irish accents back in the day, so they needed kids that could do UK accents, American accents. Bridgerton was quite easy.

“For Big Move I didn’t have to do an accent at all, I was like OK, I got this, don’t need to prep, I don’t need to upgrade.”