Bridgeton’s Irish star Nicola Coughlan applauds real women on screen

Bridgerton has made a star out of Nicola Coughlan – not that her role as Clare in Derry Girls didn’t, but the runaway success of the Netflix series has put her on another level, the kind that gets you on the Golden Globes and gushing attention from Vogue magazine, and a slot as an opinion writer for The Guardian in the U.K.

Galway girl Nicola penned a piece entitled "My Derry Girls and Bridgerton roles show women our complex, eejit selves on screen" last weekend for The Guardian praising the depiction of real-life females on TV these days.

She says she was a massive Sex and the City fan growing up, but Carrie Bradshaw and Co. were hardly relatable.

So when Nicola, 34, was cast in Derry Girls a few years back as a wise-cracking high schooler from Northern Ireland, she says it "felt like being handed the holy grail.

"Erin, Orla, Michelle, and Clare (my role) were the female characters I had been waiting for: properly funny, obnoxious, unlikeable at times."

"So much television allows for, even centers on, deeply flawed male characters, far less so women," Coughlan wrote, adding, "It made me wonder how many complex women have been toned down, or removed from our screens, on the basis that women have to be likable above anything else.”

The future, Nicola says, is promising for actresses looking to keep it real.

"I, for one, am excited by all the difficult, brilliant, complex women to come, who have yet to grace our screens.

"Long may the sisterhood reign over us."