Portside

You and The Handmaid’s Tale are two very different TV shows. One is a guilty-pleasure thriller about a freaky serial killer; the other is a dystopian series about a country ruled by religious fanatics. Yet there’s an underlying (and timely) parallel in how they focus on the horrors faced by female characters at the hands of toxic, abusive men. THT star Madeline Brewer, who joins You‘s final season, tells The A.V. Club that she’s proud of how both shows emphasize the power of women standing up for themselves.   

Brewer has played the unpredictable, sympathetic Janine Lindo on THT since the show’s beginning, with her performance earning her an Emmy nomination in 2021. In the ongoing sixth season, Janine is now a Jezebel in Gilead and ready to fight for her freedom, particularly upon reuniting with some old friends. The actor also goes toe-to-toe in You season five (which premiered April 24) alongside Penn Badgley. She portrays Bronte, the final girl of sorts who finally ends up getting Joe Goldberg captured and arrested. 

The A.V. Club spoke to Brewer about why she “felt ready” to join the Netflix series, filming Bronte’s violent confrontation with Joe in the woods, Janine’s fate, and what she hopes audiences will take away from You and The Handmaid’s Tale.  

The A.V. Club: I read that you were a big fan of You before joining the cast in season five. What was it about the show that resonated?  

Madeline Brewer: Yeah, I have been a fan of the show since it was on Lifetime. It taps into that question of what’s the reason we love true crime. I’m sure there have been psychological studies on why women find true crime so comforting and engaging. While eating breakfast today, I watched the new Netflix documentary about the Long Island serial killer. If there’s a cult or murder documentary, I’ve watched it. It’s morbid curiosity, right? You is what I love about television in that sense. It’s got everything. 

AVC: What was your first impression of Bronte when you heard about the character? What made you want to play her? 

MB: I have the best agent in the business, Andrea Weintraub. She also represents Penn Badgley, so she has been working with [executive producers] Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and Sera Gamble for a very long time. I think probably she had their ear a little bit to tell them I’ve loved You this whole time. It just so happened that this role they created in the final season was a character that I felt very prepared to play. So in initial discussions with [season-five showrunners] Justin Lowe and Michael Foley, they told me Bronte isn’t really what she seems, and I loved that. I’m an actor; I love a little duplicitousness and layers. But they also said that by the series finale, Bronte will hold Joe’s fate in her hands. As a fan and as an actor, I was excited by that. I was in and felt ready to play the part. 

AVC: How did you want to portray Bronte before and after the reveal that she’s catfishing Joe? 

MB: There were some elements that thankfully they did keep me in the dark about. I did know there would be a switch, but I didn’t know the specific detail of the catfish scheme and to what degree it was happening. So it was just about playing the moments as they are on the page because once you start trying to involve too much of the other stuff, then you’re getting in too deep. It’s good for me as an actor to know the layers, but if you’re not playing the truth of the moment, then why do we care? As an audience, we want to believe that Bronte is who she is. We have to be as surprised as Joe is when the switch occurs. Walking the line afterward was fun because I think that there was still a little bit of trepidation, but mostly love, before everything goes down in episode 10.  

AVC: Bronte is persuasive and perceptive, but she lets herself be drawn into his web of lies despite knowing he might be a psychopath. Why do you think she falls for him?

MB: When you look at almost any relationships between men and women where the man is an abuser, how often do women return to them? Not only because they have been debilitated so much that they don’t feel stable without them, but there is something that keeps making them go back. Joe is excellent at manipulation. Time and again, it’s that same formula, but it works for him. Against Bronte’s better judgment, she wants to believe that she can be loved in the way that Joe’s offering to her. When you look at Bronte’s life, or the life she led as Louise before she met him, she has been touched by grief, sorrow, and loneliness. And then she has this opportunity of a wealthy, good-looking man offering her safety, stability, and structure. They have a common interest, and they inspire each other. What’s not to fall for? Luckily, she sees the light as we know it

AVC: Before talking about the finale, I want to bring up Bronte’s conversation with Marienne in episode nine. Can you talk about the importance of that scene and why it’s a turning point?  

MB: Working with Tati Gabrielle is a gift because she’s a present, emotional actor. She’s been playing Marienne for a long time now and knows the character so well. Also, props to Tati; she was shooting The Last Of Us at the same time. As for that scene, for Bronte, we know her backstory. We know she’s been researching Marienne for years and assumed her to be dead. But then she walks into Mooney’s and Marienne’s right there, and I think seeing her starts the dissolution and the demystification of Joe Goldberg. When she sits down with Marienne, who, step by step, tells Bronte’s love story right back to her, she’s thinking that this woman has no reason to know this. So when Marienne says something along the lines of “If you’re still alive, it’s not too late,” it’s an important moment of clarity that then sets off the entirety of the finale. 

AVC: What was the experience of filming the finale and that chase in the woods with Penn like? 

MB: It was amazing. The writers came through with what they had told me about how she’ll hold Joe’s fate in her hands. I love that Bronte eventually does what she set out to do all those years ago when she got on the message boards, noticed something was strange, and followed through. She didn’t stop until she got her answer. For better or worse, she did not let that story end until she had her answer about what happened to Beck, who meant a lot to her. With the finale, we felt like we were shooting a movie. [Episode co-directors] Neil Reynolds and Michael Foley let us dig our fingers into it. It was fun to stay up all night in the middle of the woods in the summer, constantly checking myself for ticks . 

Oh god, I can still feel my body tense up remembering how it felt to shoot the finale scene where Joe is on top of Bronte, and he’s saying, “You want to know how I killed Guinevere Beck? I’ll show you.” It still sends a shiver down my spine and makes me want to cry. Not only is it a testament to how brilliant Penn is because I don’t think that he has a representation of Joe in his body anywhere, but also I felt [a responsibility] for all of the women I know and I don’t know who have been afraid for their life at the hands of someone they once trusted and loved. Shooting that put my feet on the ground of this feeling of “This is not just a TV show; it’s more than that.” 

AVC: Speaking of that sentiment, it’s striking that the final seasons of You and The Handmaid’s Tale are airing at the same time, and they do share certain threads about women standing up for themselves and fighting misogyny. 

MB: I know. I’m immensely proud of that, especially considering both shows are premiering at this moment in time in the world and our country, and that both talk about the importance of believing women and having a community amongst each other. One of the main things that women aren’t allowed to do in The Handmaid’s Tale is to write and speak to each other. But we are our saviors. We pull each other up. It’s like the scene from You we talked about with Bronte and Marienne. I also love that scene with Bronte and Kate [Charlotte Ritchie] because it’s representative of the way that we pit women against each other in society, give them roles like the jealous ex-wife and the mistress, whereas all Kate is trying to do is tell Bronte to run and warn her that she’s in deep. But Bronte won’t believe her because of what we build up in our minds and our culture about why we don’t like certain women or some crap like that. So I like that it’s a conversation with Marienne where it finally hits Bronte that she might end up as another Joe Goldberg victim. Without a conversation between these two women, Joe would be free, and there would be like six more seasons of You. 

AVC: Did you film both shows back-to-back? Was it tough to get out of either character’s headspace? 

MB: I had a few weeks’ break between filming both shows. And I’m not by any means a method actor, but I did find it strangely more difficult to shake off Bronte at the end of the day. It also seemed dependent on the day. Some scenes were so emotionally easy and fun. With Janine, I’ve known who she is for so many years now. But there are certain scenes where my body has had difficulty processing that someone didn’t just try to kill me.

AVC: What can you share about where the rest of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s final season is going and what Janine’s fate might be? 

MB: I just did my final session of ADR the other day for Janine, so I’m still processing that it was my final piece of work ever for The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ll be honest, the night we wrapped filming season six in the middle of nowhere in Canada, it was 3 a.m. and it was freezing. So it was just another night. But to watch Janine’s final scene now, I was distraught. I’m so proud of Janine, and I’m honored by where the show ends her story. Episode six has one of the more horrible scenes with her, but I don’t think I can say more about [the remaining episodes] yet. But it didn’t ever seem like it was going to go the way that it went for her. I called our series creator, Bruce Miller, after I was done and just wept on the phone to him and thanked him. The way Elisabeth Moss has shot my final scene also means so much to me.

AVC: How do you feel about Janine’s evolution over the years?

MB: I’m grateful to our writers that they allowed Janine to grow. They could have kept her as like a little bit of a screw-loose crazy girl, but they allowed her to become grounded as she would necessarily be after what she keeps going through. I think things change for her in season four when June gets out after Chicago, and Janine has to go back into service. We can see she’s lost that flighty, disengaged , and she’s got her feet on the ground, trying to deal with what’s in front of her. I’m proud that as I have grown as a person and as an actor over the years, the writers have allowed Janine to evolve with me. This final season has some of my favorite Janine moments. She takes on a little bit of that June energy. She’s learned from the best, strongest character in this series and embodies a little bit of that now. 

AVC: What do you hope the legacy of a TV show like The Handmaid’s Tale will be? 

MB: I hope what’s reflected in this final season, at least in what I shot, because I haven’t seen the whole thing yet, is the similar stuff we spoke about with You. These shows have become about getting through tough times with community and sisterhood. The takeaway is we need each other despite everything in our world telling us to turn our backs on each other, to envy and belittle and hate and gossip about each other. Women are at our most powerful when we’re together.