star Nicola Coughlan swaps regency era London for all of time and space in ‘s eagerly anticipated festive offering. She plays the Joy of the title who checks into a London hotel in 2024, and opens a secret doorway to the Time Hotel, where she discovers danger, dinosaurs and the Doctor.
It is just the latest high profile role for the star from the small town of Oranmore, who found worldwide fame thanks to her role in the period drama. She has had a meteoric rise. Just seven years ago she was a broke and unknown actress waiting on her breakthrough role in ‘s Derry Girls to broadcast.
Back in 2017 she was still working part time in an opticians in her native Galway and felt like a “failure” having not made it as an actor four years after leaving drama school. The 37-year-old had moved to on three separate occasions chasing her acting dream but was eventually forced to move back in with her parents .
“I just felt like the worst failure in the world,” she told The Observer in an interview. “Like I’d wasted time. I was pitying myself: ‘Why did you think you could do this?’”
She opened up on the realities of her job in the opticians during that period to the . “You can imagine I didn’t earn much money from two days a week, but something about working there gave me structure and a weird love for filing and organising.
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Nicola Coughlan is one of the stars of the Doctor Who Christmas special (Image: BBC)
“That’s why I’m really good at keeping my tax receipts in order” she joked. She also confessed, despite the hardship, she looked back on those times fondly.
However, she fell into depression and was struggling financially. In 2022 she admitted in an interview with that she still had a genuine fear of having nothing following that time in her life.
“That fear of having nothing is still there. I was in debt with student loans, I was working minimum wage and the rent was so high.
“It’s not that long since I’ve been able to go and buy a coffee and not have a panic attack. So I reckon I’ll have a few more years of thinking ‘I hope I have some money in my bank account’,” she pondered.
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Nicola Coughlan stars opposite Ncuti Gatwa in the latest Doctor Who special (Image: BBC)
Despite her fears those days seem to be firmly behind her now. Her role as Claire Devlin in Derry Girls brought her to public attention and by the time the show ended in 2022 she was a bona fide star having also appeared in Bridgerton since 2020.
In between filming the shows she also squeezed in a role in last year’s monster hit movie Barbie which further catapulted her into the superstar stratosphere.
She is a regular on red carpets and has become a style icon – in 2021 Vogue voted her one of their best dressed women – and her contacts book is bulging with A- list friends, including Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness who has become a good friend.
which only served to elevate her star status even further.
With several more season’s of the period drama planned and many more imminent projects, including a starring role in the Enid Blyton adaptation The Magic Faraway Tree, it is safe to say that she won;t be returning to work in an opticians any time soon,