Did Netflix Do Nicola Coughlan Dirty With This Bridgerton Poster?!

The next season of Bridgerton is on the way, and we can’t help but notice something pretty s**tty Netflix seems to be doing…

This season is based on the book focusing on Penelope Featherington, played by beloved Irish actress Nicola Coughlan, and her will they/won’t they with Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton). All well and fine, except…

Video: Watch The Spicy Bridgerton Season 3 Trailer HERE!

We’re getting the feeling the streaming giant may not feel the Derry Girls star is… god, we hate to even write this out… It kinda seems like they don’t think she’s hot enough to be their bodice-ripping romantic lead. Sigh…

Last Thursday, the same day as the trailer came out, Netflix released an official poster for the show that showed Penelope and Colin in a fairly traditional romance novel pose:

✨New Nic and Newts✨
Netflix drops the #BridgertonSeason3 poster pic.twitter.com/O8R1kOVvvB

— Nic and Newts (@NicandNewts) April 11, 2024

This was meant to be THE image for Season 3. Amazon even changed their listing for the book Romancing Mister Bridgerton to a tie-in cover made from the poster. But fans were NOT having it! Why?

They couldn’t get over how Nicola’s face had been painted over with some kind of AI Photoshop nonsense! Folks on the Bridgerton Reddit were quick to voice their discomfort, commenting:

“Ok ngl I don’t like this poster they did Pen dirty it looks AI”

“I wouldn’t know it’s her if I didn’t know it’s her. The Photoshop is ridiculous and baffling–Nicola is beautiful as is.”

“They unnecessarily YASSIFIED Pen. Jesus.”

“This looks so ai-generated. I kinda hate it!”

“I like the idea of this, but they could have chilled with the Photoshop. Nicola does not need this amount of Photoshop, her skin looks flawless irl lol.”

It goes on like that. A LOT. And they aren’t wrong about it being a major edit! We know because on Monday Nicola herself posted the ACTUAL photo to her Instagram page! She just put it up ostensibly as promo for the show, writing simply:

“One Month”

But we couldn’t help notice in this version she looks fab and, well, like a person and not a cartoon.

Nicola’s version is also pretty lo-res. Like maybe she doesn’t have access to the original anymore, without all the yassification? In any case, fans seemed to catch what Nicola was throwing down. And they immediately fell in love with the version that didn’t cover up the actress with cartoon nonsense. They wrote:

“YESSSS IM SO OVER THE PHOTOSHOPPED VERSION ”

“This is better than the poster! This is the book cover we wanted!!!! You look gorgeous here!!!!”

“This should’ve been the book cover.”

“Can we start a petition to have this one as the book cover? The other one has terrible editing. Idk why they made you into a weird cartoon and Luke looks relatively normal I want a pretty book cover, like this one!”

After the world swooned for Phoebe Dynevor and Regé-Jean Page in Season 1, the zeitgeist hasn’t exactly been as obsessed with the show. We’re guessing Netflix is desperate to get that magic back, but this is gross and insulting to their star. We just don’t know what they were thinking, though we do have an inkling what they’re thinking now: OOPS!

The poster seems to have been WIPED from all the official Netflix and Bridgerton social media feeds. Hmm. We’re getting the impression they saw the blowback and took that nonsense down. Unfortunately not in time to stop it from being the book cover, we guess?

What do YOU think Netflix was trying to do here? Are you feeling as cynical as we are about it?? Or is there a reasonable explanation in your estimation?? Let us know in the comments below!

[Image via MEGA/WENN/Netflix/YouTube.]