Nicola Coughlan stole our hearts the moment she arrived on screens as the sweet and responsible Clare Devlin in Derry Girls.
The Irish actor played a teenager in the hit Channel 4 sitcom about a group of friends navigating life and Catholic girls’ school during the Northern Ireland troubles in the early 1990s.
Now, she’s set to take centre stage in season 3 of Bridgerton, which will focus on Penelope’s relationship with Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton).
Fans are giving Nicola a whole lotta love right now, which is how some have only come to discover the actor’s real age for the first time.
Having played two huge roles where the characters are in their teens – around age 16 in Derry Girls and 18 in Bridgerton – viewers assumed Nicola was perhaps in her 20s.
But no, reader, Nicola is in fact 37.
Check out some more flabbergasted reactions below.
The actor recently opened up about how her acting career came about in her late 20s. In a first-person piece for Harper’s Bazaar, she shared: “In 2017, I was working part time in an optician’s, about to turn 30, living at home with my parents, unsure whether the whole ‘acting thing’ was ever going to happen or whether I was completely kidding myself.”
Elsewhere in the essay, she set the record straight on people who “assume” she finds herself “hideous”.
Nicola said that while she’s “in disbelief that I’m the leading lady in a romance show”, it definitely doesn’t stem from how she feels about her appearance.
She explained her surprise is “not because I find myself hideous, as some people have assumed when I say that (I’ll have you know, in the right lighting I’m a solid seven), but because it’s not something I ever dreamed of”.