Age: 39
female
Nicola Mary Coughlan is an Irish actress. She is known for her roles as Clare Devlin in the Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls and Penelope Featherington in the Netflix period drama Bridgerton. She earned a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for playing the lead role of Penelope Featherington in the third season of Bridgerton. Coughlan earned a British Academy Television Awards nomination for her role as Maggie Donovan in Big Mood (2024–present). Coughlan was born on 9 January 1987 in Galway, Ireland, and grew up in Oranmore. The youngest of three siblings, her father served in the Irish Army before passing away in 2016, and her mother was a stay-at-home parent. At the age of five, while watching her sister perform in a school play, Coughlan decided she wanted to become an actress. She attended Scoil Mhuire Primary School and Calasanctius College. She graduated with a degree in English and Classical Civilisation from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She then went on to train in England at the Oxford School of Drama and Birmingham School of Acting.
Sasha has had it. She cannot bring herself to respond to another inane, “urgent” (but obviously not at all urgent) email or participate in the corporate employee joyfulness program. She hasn’t seen her friends in months. Sex? Seems like a lot of effort. Even cooking dinner takes far too much planning. Sasha has hit a wall. Armed with good intentions to drink kale smoothies, try yoga, and find peace, she heads to the seaside resort she loved as a child. But it’s the off season, the hotel is in a dilapidated shambles, and she has to share the beach with the only other a grumpy guy named Finn, who seems as stressed as Sasha. How can she commune with nature when he’s sitting on her favorite rock, watching her? Nor can they agree on how best to alleviate their burnout ( manifesting, wild swimming; drinking whisky, getting pizza delivered to the beach). When curious messages, seemingly addressed to Sasha and Finn, begin to appear on the beach, the two are forced to talk—about everything. How did they get so burned out? Can either of them remember something they used to love? (Answer: surfing!) And the question they try and fail to ignore: what does the energy between them—flaring even in the face of their bone-deep exhaustion—signify?
