When Madeline Brewer takes a moment to reflect on how far she’s come in her career—she stops herself. “Don’t make me cry! I just put on mascara,” says the actress, 33, who’s been nonchalantly applying makeup during her Zoom interview. She’s having a whirlwind year professionally and personally—she’s in two of the buzziest series wrapping up their runs this spring, You and The Handmaid’s Tale, plus she has a new thriller movie in the works opposite Diane Lane and a wedding on the horizon. “I think young Maddie would be proud of me,” she says. “She couldn’t have dreamed up the life that I have now.”
As a teen growing up in Pitman, N.J., Brewer was focused on a career in musical theater. She studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City and made a living by working at Victoria’s Secret and a restaurant before she booked her first recurring role as Tricia, an inmate on the Netflix hit Orange Is the New Black. “It was my first job. I was 20 and fresh out of school,” she says. “So much of Tricia’s personality was really just me being utterly frightened.”
Brewer appeared on the horror series Hemlock Grove in 2014 and the sci-fit hit Black Mirror in 2016, but it wasn’t until 2017, when she landed the part of Janine on Hulu’s acclaimed The Handmaid’s Tale, that her trajectory changed. After playing the one-eyed handmaid opposite Elisabeth Moss for nine years, Brewer says, the resilient character has become “so much a part of me. “I’ve really grown up with her. My frontal lobe wasn’t cooked yet when we started, but our circle is completed. It’s a natural ending.” The finale airs May 27. For Brewer the wrap party “wasn’t particularly emotional. For some people it was. Like Yvonne [Strahovski] was a mess, but for me it was time to move on.”
She joined the final season of another cultural juggernaut, Netflix’s You, as Bronte, the “final girl” to serial killer Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). “I’m a huge fan, so I was excited to be a part of that world,” Brewer says. Joe has an affair with Bronte, a young employee at his bookstore, and the characters’ intimate moments shocked viewers after Badgley, 38, said in 2023 that he didn’t want to perform sex scenes anymore out of respect for his wife, Domino Kirke-Badgley. “I think it was an important element to add this season,” Brewer says. “We felt safe and protected and built a level of trust and respect.”
As the reviews poured in, one thing Brewer didn’t expect was the scrutiny surrounding her appearance. “I get that I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, but I didn’t expect [commenters] to call me ugly, because I’m not,” she says. “I never anticipated the amount of misogyny fired at me.” Brewer says she was bullied as a child, and comments suggesting she needed plastic surgery “triggered” her. “I feel very grateful that this didn’t happen at an earlier time in my life. If this had happened when I was 25, I would have crumbled because I wasn’t in therapy yet. Being in my 30s, I don’t care. I knew I could handle it.” She’s aware criticism is “par for the course” of being an actor, and “now I don’t give a f---,” she says. “As long as they’re doing it to me and not somebody who can’t handle it, bring it on.”
When she needs comforting, Brewer says, she looks to her fiancé, Jack Thompson-Roylance. “He thinks the sun shines out of my butt, and I’m the most beautiful woman in the world,” she says before the British cinematographer jokes from the background, “Don’t let me ruin your answers!” The couple rib each other before he leaves the room with a soft, “I love you, bye.”
The two are gearing up for a July wedding in England, where she’ll have two Handmaid’s Tale costars, Nina Kiri and Bahia Watson, as bridesmaids. As a “perfectionist,” Brewer wants everything to go smoothly to pull off her vision of “Bridgerton by day and Saltburn at night.” But she has no nerves when it comes to saying “I do.” “That’s my dude,” she says. “It’s going to be fun.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: JENNA JONES; EVERETT; MEDIA PUNCH/SHUTTERSTOCK; CLIFTON PRESCOD/NETFLIX; EVERETT; ALAN CHAPMAN/DAVE BENETT/WIREIMAGE