As Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton stepped in to lead Bridgerton’s hotly anticipated third season, the two stars got some much-needed guidance from season 2 star Simone Ashley.
“Just there to make sure that they had someone, that they had a friend,” Ashley, 29, told PEOPLE at the Netflix hit’s New York City premiere on Monday, May 13. “Me and Nicola would check in on each other. She is such an inspiration to me and I learned so much from her and there were times she was giving me advice. So, it was just what an amazing thing to have in your work environment.”
Teasing the steaminess of the new season, Ashley added that the “scale [is] broken beyond 10, as many zeros as you can possibly imagine, if that makes sense.”
Related: Bridgerton Is Back! Check Out Every Photo from Monday Night’s Glamorous Red Carpet Premiere
Coughlan previously told PEOPLE in June 2023 that the season is “really special and it stays very true to the books,” referring to Romancing Mister Bridgerton, the fourth book in Julia Quinn’s series about the Bridgerton family.
“I always look at the three seasons like this. I think season 1 was about passion, season 2 was about longing and season 3, I think it’s romance all the way,” she said. “It’s just so romantic.”
“There were a lot of moments on set where we filmed something and we’d turn around and everyone was sort of clutching their chest being like ‘Oh my God.’ It was that kind of love,” she added.
As the season begins, Penelope finds herself socially stranded after being outed as Lady Whistledown to her best friend Eloise (Claudia Jessie), who also happens to be Colin’s younger sister. Without the company and support of her friends, she decides to take her life into her own hands.
In Coughlan’s words, her character is “sort of like, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m out with Eloise. I’m out with Colin. I don’t want to be with my family. I need a husband.'”
“So she’s like a woman on a mission. She’s ready to go, ready to launch herself out into the marriage market in a new way. She wants a whole new look, and she gets it.”
In addition to her new character’s outlook, Coughlan also teased that fans things got heated during the steamy scenes between her and Newton. She shared that they broke a piece of furniture while filming a sex scene, and found the filming process “really funny.”
“We would be like, in between scenes, and they were like, ‘Do you wanna get up and put your clothes on?’ We’re like, ‘We’ll just chill here.’ Like, in under the blankets,” she recalled during an interview on SiriusXM Hits 1 in April. “But then we have the advantage of knowing each other for years.”
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The first part of Bridgerton season 3 premieres on May 16, and and part 2 drops on June 13. Seasons 1 and 2 of Bridgerton — as well as its spinoff, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story — are now streaming on Netflix.
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