Madeline Brewer Tells Us What It’s Like to Be Penn Badgley’s Final Girl

This week, Joe Goldberg claims his final victim as the beloved Netflix thriller You hurtles toward it’s end inevitable, violent end. Seven years and five seasons later, Penn Badgley’s creepy, charming antagonist will meet (and set his sights on) Bronte, a recent NYC transplant played by the actor Madeline Brewer. “It was a big undertaking, but this show has something so much more important to say than just what’s on the surface,” Brewer told her friend Cazzie David last week when the pair got on a post-binge watch Zoom call. But the New Jersey-born performer, who starred in the first season of Orange Is the New Black and now returns as Janine Lindo in the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, is no stranger to playing characters navigating portentous or even dystopian circumstances. Before we get to see her make out with Penn Badgley for a whole season while she unknowingly awaits misfortune, Brewer and David got together on a Zoom call to talk about the pressures of joining a beloved series, her relationship with social media, and learning to leave your ego at the door on set.

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CAZZIE DAVID: Hey Maddie. How’s it going?

MADELINE BREWER: It’s good. How are you? What are you doing? Where are you?

DAVID: I’m in L.A. Where are you?

BREWER: I’m in L.A. too.

DAVID: Oh, we should just meet up. What are we doing on here?

BREWER: Yeah, what the hell are we doing on here?

DAVID: Seriously. Well, I’m so excited for everything you have coming out right now and I’m mostly excited because it’s the first time I got to actually watch, because everything you’ve been in is too disturbing for me, unfortunately. You’re such an amazing actress, but I’m really excited to actually be able to watch you in the show.

BREWER: Thank you. It’s a great season and it’s one of my favorite shows, so I’m excited for everyone to see how we finish it out.

DAVID: So you were a fan of the show before?

BREWER: Big fan.

DAVID: It’s such a good show. I’m obsessed with it. There’s been such a long line of brilliant performances by women before you—did you kind of study them, or was that intimidating?

BREWER: It was definitely intimidating, especially the fact that there’s a different “You” every season. It was a big undertaking, but this show has something so much more important to say than just what’s on the surface and, understanding that, I wanted to do the character justice. I wouldn’t say I studied because my character is so different from the others. And that’s a nod to our writers, who have made all of these women that Joe falls in love with very full and alive and fully fleshed out with lives and personalities. It passes the Bechdel Test. Well, maybe it doesn’t…

DAVID: No, it probably doesn’t. But to your point, it does say so much more than just being entertainment, which I think is hard now where it’s like, this is a show that’s so funny but has really dark material and these really serious themes. I noticed addiction was one of them. I don’t know if that’s even intentional, but it really feels like it could be entirely about that alone.

BREWER: Yeah. Also, in the third season with Marienne, they take on addiction and motherhood in a really interesting way. They just branch out beyond, “Here’s a really bad dude who falls in love with these women.” They allow the women to be complicated and to be messy, very messy, and for lack of a better word, they allow them to be just themselves. That’s not the thing that’s at fault. That’s really important to me, especially in watching the first season. For all of Beck’s faults, she’s not a very good girlfriend. She’s complicated. She’s messy. She has really strange boundaries with her relationships with her friends and her parents. In a lot of ways, she’s a little bit fucked up. She’s simultaneously brilliant and very loving and really just smart and cool. And neither of those two things, the good and the bad, justifies what he does to her. Sometimes, I feel like we get on his side, we root for him. So I hope that in this final season, we get more people on the side of the lives that he’s trying to take.

DAVID: Right. I mean, there’s nothing like it on TV right now, this thing where you’re rooting for the guy who is killing people. I just binged The Day of The Jackal and I thought it was the best show ever. And the whole time, I’m just rooting for him to not get into trouble. And it’s kind of the same thing with You, and I don’t even know really why because he’s not an empathetic character, even though you can relate to the addiction in certain ways. Obviously he’s addicted to murdering people, so it’s not the same.

BREWER: He’s got that white knight thing. Because when it starts out, he falls in love with a girl and then he kills people to protect her. In this twisted way, I think we’d all like to feel protected in that way–not in the murder way, but to have a partner that you feel like will go to bat for you. But then it’s really because everyone is kind of just a warm body that he replaces. There is no filling that hole for him. Also, not to mention the fact that we’re willing to go to these dark places with him and root for him, not only because we’ve been given his vulnerability and his past and we understand that he’s a really deeply traumatized person, but let’s not discount the fact that he’s a gorgeous white man. He is truly one of the best-looking people I’ve ever seen up close. I’ll tell him that to his face. And then you add this layer of this really smart, charismatic, charming, protective, deeply loving, or seemingly so, character. Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

DAVID: Can you relate in your own life, that idea of not feeling like you can really ever know someone? Or you do fall for someone and something about them kind of comes out that you weren’t expecting? I feel like that’s also a theme of the show, how well can you ever really know someone.

BREWER: Yeah. I mean, everybody does that when you’re falling in love, though. You aren’t exactly who you’re going to be for the whole relationship. Everybody’s putting on their best self for those first few months, and then the layers kind of start to fall away as you learn more about someone. I’ve been fortunate in my relationships that I’ve not encountered any murderers quite yet.

DAVID: As far as you know.

BREWER: As far as I know. I mean, I’m going to get married and everything could change. He might murder me, but I hope not.

DAVID: The tone is so specific to this show, which is why I love it so much. It’s so unique. Did you ever think about altering your performance at all to fit in with this world and tone that’s already been so established, or did you just do character work?

BREWER: I think the only thing is that Penn speaks really quickly. He talks fast as hell. So I kind of wanted to match that, because they do pack a lot of dialogue into these scenes. I felt like I was on an Amy Sherman-Palladino show. That kind of kept me on my toes a little bit, because oftentimes in television you’re rehearsing on camera. But I don’t think I change the character. I mean, I’m always keeping an eye out to avoid the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, but in this case, it was a tool. And I think we’ll see later in the season just how much of a tool it is. Because let’s be real, if there’s anyone on this earth who is a sucker for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, it’s Zach Braff and Joe Goldberg.

DAVID: Totally. I’m curious, what was your process for this role and any others?

BREWER: Well, for Handmaid’s Tale, especially after five, six seasons, I don’t even have to think. She’s in my body. And we have such a great time on that show, and we’ve all been friends for so many years that you just kind of flip a switch and it’s there. We know the tone, we know the style, we know the characters, so it’s a very easy switch. For this, honestly, a lot of the scenes that I have, I wouldn’t call them fun. I think Anna Camp got to do most of the fun stuff. Of course, she was playing identical twins.

DAVID: So, so funny.

BREWER: But yeah, there are some things that I had to play in the first half of the season that make sense later, without giving a spoiler. But for so much of those first three, four episodes, her personality is structured. Is this too vague?

DAVID: No, it’s actually not. But I do think it’s interesting that that was really specific for the character and for her storyline. Whereas what I was saying is that I see so many actors and actresses just doing it, just making sure they are being seductive, even if it has nothing to do with what is going on.

BREWER: I mean, that’s one of my least favorite things to see in film or television, seeing an actor or an actress be aware of what they look like when they’re on camera. You know it when you see it. It drives me up a fucking wall. I just immediately am like, “Oh, you are giving angles.”

DAVID: Some are really getting away with it.

BREWER: Well, some have made an entire career out of it, let’s be honest. 

DAVID: Yes, exactly. What do you feel has been the most challenging role for you out of all of these? I mean, Orange Is The New Black, another show I couldn’t watch because I don’t want to immerse myself in prison.

BREWER: I feel like the first season of Orange you could get through. And that’s all you need to watch because that’s all I’m in.

DAVID: I can’t even watch Severance because it’s just too fluorescent.

BREWER: Oh God. It is so fluorescent.

DAVID: I couldn’t watch Ozark because it was too blue. I missed out on some of these really great shows that everyone has seen.

BREWER: You’re sensitive.

DAVID: I’m really sensitive. Breaking Bad was just too dusty. But I’m really happy I can finally watch you in something. This season has been so, so great and you never see any of the twists coming.

BREWER: I’m on a crusade to get an Emmy campaign happening for Penn Badgley.

DAVID: No, this show truly deserves something. I think there are way worse shows that are winning Emmys and this just is truly one of the best things on TV. Do you ever feel like Handmaid’s Tale just got everything wrong?

BREWER: No, I think that there’s—

DAVID: [Laughs] That was a joke. 

BREWER: I mean, I know that Bradley [Whitford] likes to say that Elizabeth Moss is doing Sophie’s Choice the series because it’s just seemingly endless horrors. I think that I’m very proud of where we end the final season because they don’t lose the thesis statement of the series: “nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” which is “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Which, at this point in time, is the thesis we need. I mean, it’s the call to action that we need as a society. It’s like, they’re going to try you, they’re going to grind you down and deplete you and make you scared, but you cannot let that stop your fight. That’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

DAVID: Really well-said. I’m curious what your relationship is like to social media while you’re working, and what your algorithm is, and if you’re surviving?

BREWER: I think that I’ve baby-proofed my algorithm, especially on TikTok. I go there for the chuckles, for the laughs.

DAVID: What’s making you laugh? And how do I get my algorithm to make me laugh?

BREWER: I follow some funny people who have fun takes. Honestly, what I have on TikTok is just goofy silliness; that’s like my smooth-brained activity for the day. I have a weird relationship with Instagram just because of the fact that it’s a tool that we all use to promote ourselves.

DAVID: It’s so hard to sell something that you hate, AKA yourself.

BREWER: Yeah. If done correctly, it can completely change your life. I mean, would I like to be able to live off Instagram likes? I don’t know. Probably not, because I like acting too much. It’s strange to me that I got Instagram in 2012.

DAVID: Yeah. I recall the day.

BREWER: Now it’s 2025 and I still have no clue what I’m doing.

DAVID: It was just so innocent back then. It feels like it’s gotten so corrupt and it’s just become something else entirely.

BREWER: Yeah, like Flickr. Remember Flickr?

DAVID: I don’t. [Laughs] What is Flickr?

BREWER: Flickr was where you posted photos.

DAVID: Well, bring back Flickr.

BREWER: I mean, it sounds kind of like a lesbian porn site. Sorry, that was too much.

DAVID: I would name a cat Flickr. Well, that’s really all I have for you, Maddie.

BREWER: Cazzie, thank you so much.

DAVID: No, thank you. I’m such a big fan of yours and I’m so excited to binge the rest of this season. It’s truly one of my favorite shows.

BREWER: Thank you. I’m very proud to be a part of it.