Nicola Coughlan has made a name for herself in the acting world with her roles as Clare on Channel 4’s sensational comedy Derry Girls and Penelope Featherington on Netflix’s hit period-drama Bridgerton. But the Galway girl could’ve had a completely different role as the star revealed she auditioned for the part of Robin from the sci-fi drama Stranger Things.
The character Robin only joined the show in the fourth season back in 2019. So while the actress had already entered our screens as Clare Devlin, in another life Nicola might not have played the iconic Penelope Featherington.
Obviously, the role of Robin went to Maya Hawke, and it turns out there are no bad feelings between the two. Speaking to Buzzfeed, Nicola confessed, “I auditioned for Stranger Things a number of years ago.”
“I auditioned to play Robin, Maya Hawke got it, she was far better than I ever would have been.”
But, ever the optimist, Nicola focused on the valuable lessons she learned about the acting world. Saying, “It’s a good lesson to actors: Watch the stuff you didn’t get, because you’ll totally understand how it’s not personal.”
Continuing on to say, “You’re just right for some things, and you’re not right for other things,”
And things worked out extremely well for Nicola as she went on to land her iconic role in Bridgerton. Which is now after setting some major Netflix records.
Season one of the show, which came out in late 2020, quickly became the highest rated programme on Netflix with 82 million streams in only 30 days.
This was later overtaken by Netflix’s Squid Games, but season two help the ton break some new records.
And Lady Penelope herself, couldn’t help but celebrate. Posting to Instagram, she wrote, “Deeply grateful to you all for watching #Bridgerton and for helping us break global records: 193 million hours of viewing time worldwide — the highest for any English-language Netflix series in its first three days.”
“We’ve also made the top 10 in 92 of the 93 countries which has blown my mind, thank you so much.”
