Bridgerton favourite Nicola Coughlan on creating a porn addiction TV drama
By Google News Category Drama ·
In the latest I Am... drama, Nicola Coughlan explores the manosphere, porn addiction and toxic relationships. It’s a long way from Derry and the Ton.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Best known for her comedic brilliance in Derry Girls and Bridgerton, Nicola Coughlan is taking a darker role in C4’s I Am Helen, a raw, improvised drama about sexual consent, pornography and the invidious ways that a relationship can be wrecked by it.
When 39-year-old Coughlan first met Dominic Savage, the writer and director behind the acclaimed series, she had no idea they would end up making a film together. “People ask what drew me to the role, but there was no role: I was drawn to Dominic as a writer and director.
"I’d found some of the previous stories in the I Am… anthology incredibly affecting, and I think the best work you make is when you get on with people and have a shared ethos. I left thinking, ‘What a nice man’. I would also say that he’s a wizard.”
Famously, the I Am… series isn’t scripted, with Savage instead working alongside actors including Vicky McClure, Suranne Jones and Kate Winslet. “It’s a story, written in a narrative way,” Coughlan explains. “I felt scared, wondering how it was going to work. I’m lucky I’m not a nervous actor, but before that first day [of filming] I felt ill. I was absolutely terrified.
"With any role, there’s often prep work you can do that gives you a bit of armour. There was nothing I could do for this, because it’s improvised. Any prep would have gone against me.”
This process meant that themes emerged as the characters took shape. “When people found out it was about toxic masculinity, they questioned why we wanted to make something about the manosphere. Well, we didn’t. It just came about, I suppose.”
What actually came about is a sensitive, nuanced portrayal of a man’s pornography addiction, and how it bleeds into real life. Helen and Steve have been together for five years, but Steve is floundering in the wake of her purpose and ambition, one implication being that he turns to porn as a means of feeling in control. “There’s no hatred there,” says Coughlan.
“But their relationship does develop into something scary, as is often the reality.”
It certainly does, with one sex scene depicting Steve’s attempt to choke Helen, a behaviour influenced by his porn addiction. If it’s a tough watch, it was even tougher to film. “It was very different from something like Bridgerton, which has intimacy rehearsals, so you know exactly what’s going to happen.
On this, you couldn’t do that in the same way, but we certainly sat down with the intimacy coordinator and said what we were comfortable with. I knew the choking was going to happen, and I had a safe word. But it was very intense.”
It’s a testament to Joe Cole’s portrayal of Steve that despite his many flaws, his character isn’t entirely unsympathetic. “Joe did a great job. Steve is quite a laddish character, like a lot of guys who think of themselves as supporters of women but still have really regressive ideas. I don’t think that Joe plays Steve as overly unrelatable.
Even progressive men can feel insecure about an ambitious woman, or a woman who earns her own money.
“Talking to people after [the screening], they’d say they felt for Steve, and I’d want to go, ‘No – he’s a bad guy!’ But their reaction is better, because we’ve become so polarised. In life, we often look for heroes and villains, but that’s not how the real world works. If…
Originally published by Google News Category Drama
