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June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) may be the beating heart of The Handmaid's Tale, but Janine Lindo (Madeline Brewer) started the series as its adrenaline, and this season, she's returning to who she is.
"I've talked to Lizzie [Moss] about it," Brewer told Newsweek. "This is pilot Janine. This is 'f**k you' Janine."
In Season 1, Janine's sharp tongue and refusal to bend to the will of Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) and the rest of her captors in Gilead—the oppressive, regressive patriarchal religious society that has sprouted up in response to a fertility crisis—led to her having one of her eyes gouged out. A series of other traumas, both before and after Gilead—a gang rape, the loss of her son, the loss of her daughter, and finally escaping Gilead only to be captured in Chicago and returned—understandably dampened her spirit. At times she seemed like an obsequious blind-faith shell of herself; at others, she gave her power away to a male rebel she thought could protect her.
But in Season 5, which premiered September 14, that original spark is clearly back, and according to Brewer, it really never left.
"It was something that I know I've kept track of throughout the seasons," Brewer told Newsweek about Janine's emotional journey. "That's still there. That's always going to be there, that Janine. She's chosen many different forms and many different mindsets and many different places to go in her brain to survive, but that woman that's where she is. That fire is always burning. Sometimes it's embers, sometimes it's a big raging flame."
For Brewer, whose character takes on a slightly new role after a tremendous betrayal this season, it is Janine's undeniable and intrinsic spirit that keeps her going. "That to me is Janine's power. It's the thing that Gilead cannot take away from her. They cannot extinguish it. It is her spirit, it is her soul."
As an actor, Brewer has kept her eye on that spirit and worked with its evolution. "We've kept track of it throughout the seasons, and definitely this season you see more and more of it, even though now it does look a little bit different. The flame is loud but on the outside it's more muted. It's not as intense and it's not as rough and it's not as 'f**k you.' There's a wise woman in there, a woman whose experience some s**t and doesn't need bells and whistles and 'f**k you's to get her point across.'
Earlier this year, Brewer and Moss also co-starred in Apple TV's thriller Shining Girls, which Moss—who serves as executive producer and director of Handmaid's—also produced and directed.
New episodes of The Handmaid's Tale drop on Hulu on Wednesdays.
