Nicola Coughlan Makes Rare Comment on ‘Intense’ Attention Over Relationship With Younger Boyfriend Jake Dunn

Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan is opening up about the “intense” level of attention that she has faced regarding her relationship with boyfriend Jake Dunn.

“Imagine if you had an evening at the pub and then you walked around, talking, having a lovely time, and a few days later, you see pictures of that,” Coughlan, 38, told The Guardian in a Saturday, December 6, profile. “The violation is immense.”

Coughlan and Dunn, 25, were first romantically linked in late 2024 before making their red carpet debut at the BAFTA Television & Television Craft Awards nominees party in April.

While Coughlan and the Renegade Nell actor seldom discuss their romance at length, their 13-year age difference often raises eyebrows from fans.

“People go, ‘Oh, there’s so-and-so from TV.’ They forget you’re a person,” Coughlan told the outlet. “That level of attention is hugely intense, and I don’t know how well that suits me.”

She continued, “The intensity gave me horrific anxiety. I was like, ‘I really want to go away.’ … Work is one world and my private life is another. When one started collapsing into the other, I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’”

Coughlan, who rose to fame playing Clare Devlin on the cult hit Derry Girls, has since found worldwide fame on Netflix’s Bridgerton based on Julia Quinn’s bestselling regency novels. Coughlan stars as Penelope Bridgerton (née Featherington), whose love story with Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) was chronicled on season 3 last year.

“With Derry Girls, people really enjoy the show, and say, ‘I love that.’ With Bridgerton, it’s a different beast,” Coughlan said, denying that any of her daily actions and outfits are secret Easter eggs to the show. “I’m definitely not. I definitely just put a jumper on and the color doesn’t mean anything.”

Certain fans even — falsely — believe that Coughlan and Newton, 32, were in a real-life relationship upon the season premiere. (Newton, for his part, is dating model Antonia Roumelioti.)

“The maddest thing they thought was that I’d had a secret baby and was hiding it,” Coughlan quipped to The Guardian. “I would like to go on the record and say, ‘I don’t have a secret baby.’ It’s real in the show [and] they’re married forever in the show. They have a baby in the show!”

Bridgerton season 3 ended with Penelope and Colin’s romantic wedding and the arrival of their first baby, a son. The now-newlyweds will pass the baton to Colin’s brother Benedict (Luke Thompson) to lead season 4 when it premieres in early 2026.

“I can say that I’m super excited for the world to see this season,” Simone Ashley, who plays Kate Sharma, exclusively told Us Weekly in March about Thompson’s starring turn on the period drama. “It just gets better and better.”

The fourth season will follow the story from Quinn’s An Offer From a Gentleman novel, where Benedict falls in love with Sophie (Yerin Ha) in a Cinderella-type love story.

“I’ve read all the scripts, and I’ve seen some of the episodes,” Quinn, 55, exclusively told Us in May about the new season. “I did get to see a few scenes get filmed [when I visited the set], and the one that they were working on most of the time was a group scene. There are a lot of people in it. That’s always really special to see because one of the things that I think the show does so well is capture the sense of family and to be able to see that, sort of, live or close to live.”

Bridgerton season 4 premieres on Netflix Thursday, January 29.