She wrapped on Only Murders on Tuesday and marked it on Instagram, noting how strange and delightful it's been to watch the trio relocate from the Arconia to a British supermarket.
What's happening with Penelope
Coughlan is not leaving. She's reducing. Her framing to E! News was that she gets the best of both worlds — filming one show while dropping back into the other, which she described as feeling like coming home.
She called the shift bittersweet, said she'd had an epic run, and pointed out that Bridgerton reinvents itself every season by design. She also volunteered to return in any capacity whatsoever, including as set dressing.
The context:
- Season 3 made Penelope and Colin the central couple.
- Season 4 kept her central, and ended with the Queen granting her request to stop writing Lady Whistledown.
- Season 5 moves to Francesca and Michaela, with someone else now holding the quill.
So the reduced screen time isn't a demotion so much as the mechanical result of her own storyline concluding. This franchise rotates its leads. Everyone gets a season at the front and then goes back to the ballroom scenes.
Meanwhile, at Only Murders
Season 6 relocates Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez to London following the death of Tina Fey's Cinda Canning. Coughlan was announced in June as part of a group of local casting.
A performer leads a globally enormous show, then converts that season into work on a different globally enormous show. That's not a step back, that's a correctly executed exit.
Bridgerton Season 5 has no release date yet. Only Murders Season 6 is in the can.