Nicola Coughlanknows that numbers don’t lie.
On Tuesday, theBridgertonstar — who plays Penelope Featherington in the recently released, wildly popularNetflixperiod drama — celebrated the series' success on Twitter while simultaneously calling out naysayers who have slammed the cast’s diversity.
“You know the way some people were like ‘Diversity in period drama doesn’t work’ … 63 million households thought it did tho so,” wrote Coughlan, 33, adding a skull emoji to the endof her tweet.
“Remember people were trying to downvote the show on IMDB cos it was so diverse?” theDerry Girlsactress continued in a follow-up post. “You can’t downvote us being Netflixfifth biggest original release ever.”
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While the always-iconicJulie Andrewsnarrates the series as the mysterious Lady Whistledown (the author of the salacious society papers that do the rounds in the community),Phoebe Dynevor(Younger) stars as Daphne Bridgerton, the eldest daughter of the powerful family whose society debut meets a (sexy) hiccup or two along the way.
In a recent interview withTown & Country, Coughlan talked about landing the role inBridgerton, saying, “To be part of that world — whatShonda [Rhimes]has done for television in terms of representing women, difficult women, unlikeable women, complicated women, in terms of diversity, in terms of representing LGBTQ characters and stories — it’s a dream.”
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Recently chatting with PEOPLE, Quinn discussed the adored — and complicated — characters in her books, the “vibrant world” Van Dusen has created and the importance of the Netflix adaptation featuring a diverse cast.
While Quinn didn’t incorporate characters of color in her books, she was excited to see the show creatorscommit to “color-conscious casting.”
“I’m Jewish and when I would read a book and one of the characters would be Jewish, I’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ And it was very powerful,” she explained. “And so now I feel like I’m able to start to extrapolate that and be like, ‘You know what, everybody needs that.’ "
source: people.com
