'Handmaid's Tale' star Amanda Brugel is excited to 'grow' after the series, reveals one show she can't watch after her exit

Yahoo

13-05-2025

One of Canada's most acclaimed actors, for more than 25 years Amanda Brugel has starred in beloved projects, comedies like Kim's Convenience and Workin' Moms, to dramas including Dark Matter, The Handmaid's Tale and Brandon Cronenberg's film Infinity Pool. She was also a judge on Canada's Drag Race.
An absolute powerhouse as an actor, Brugel's career in entertainment actually began as a ballet dancer, where she recognized that she had a love for performing at a young age. But a moment on stage in a high school play solidified that this was the right career path for her.
"I really wanted to be an actor when I was younger and tried to type out little letters to agents, and my parents just wouldn't let me," she said. "I tried to mail them and I found them actually hidden a couple years after my parents told me they sent them. I found them hidden behind a bookshelf."
"The moment I stood on that stage, facing outward, it was an empty auditorium, but the moment I stood on that stage, it's very cliché, but I just felt whole and like I belonged."
Looking back, Brugel is happy that her parents put the brakes on her attempt to be a child actor.
"I just don't know if it would have been great for a Black, biracial kid growing up in the '80s to be thrust into on sets," she said. "And so I'm really thankful for them that they did that."
"One thing my parents did ... when I decided to go into acting for university, and even when I quit acting ... in my early 30s, and then decided to go back into it, my parents encouraged me, and they said, 'This is your dream. It's not the most stable, it's chaotic. It's probably going to break your heart, but it's your dream, so go for it.'"
But while the film and TV industry has long favoured young women for the best roles, Brugel highlighted that being on her most high-profile projects in her 40s, working toward success for decades, there's a "resilience" that she established.
"I've seen people have the reverse, where they had very big, large success at the very beginning and without that resilience, as soon as they sort of started to hit a wall, it almost broke them. And so I'm appreciative for the hell that I went through," she said.
Brugel was still in university when she landed a role in the 1999 movie, starring Christopher Walken, Bruce Davison and Joaquim de Almeida. Set in 1890 New Orleans, Vendetta is based on a true story about the largest lynching in American history. After the police chief was killed, Sicilian dock workers were tried for murder.
"I was just just really excited to be able to start being on film sets," Brugel said about working on the film. "I went to theatre school, I went to York [University], but film sets are an entirely different beast."
"[Christopher Walken and I] had a scene and he was very nice, and the scene was cut. I wasn't even devastated. I was just so happy to have had the the chance."
While Brugel went on to continue to audition for different projects, taking on roles in episode of various TV shows like Soul Food, Leap Years, Wild Card, Doc and The Newsroom, Brugel described the process of auditioning, particularly during that time, as "devastating and heartbreaking and confidence shattering."
"To be able to be successful in this business as an artist, you have to be two very different personalities," she said. "And so luckily for me, I am the type of person that when presented a challenge, I don't crumble. I rally against it. That's not always good. That's stubbornness, that's a slight amount of arrogance, which is necessary. But it is in me.
"So even though it was really difficult, sometimes working three jobs, I worked as a perfume salesperson at [Holt Renfrew] and I sold dog and cat perfume, ... and I worked at a hostess at a restaurant at Yonge and Eglinton [in Toronto], and then I would do temp work sometimes for offices. And so you're doing that and then you get a call for an audition. ... But it really built up a resilience that I really appreciate."
Brugel actually went to university with Kim's Convenience co-creator, Ins Choi, and even read a first draft of the play at a coffee shop on campus.
Playing the role of Pastor Nina Gomez, the show was one of few Canadians projects that wasn't just embraced in Canada, but had international fandom.
"It felt like a first," Brugel said. "It's not like it was in hindsight that we realized, 'Oh, this is sort of a first and we are relatable globally,' we really were cognizant of that, and it was exciting, and there was a lot of pride in it."
"When you have a group, a company, your cast and crew, a part of something that you know is bigger than you, it really lifts it. I really think that it built everyone. It made everyone bring their A-game. Because not only were we doing this for our own individual careers or only individual successes, we realized that we had a story to tell that was impacting people on a global level, which was really exciting and very rare, particularly for a Canadian television show. And so it was thrilling. I still call it summer camp. It's still one of my favourite jobs that I've ever done."
Fans of Kim's Convenience will remember the unexpected cancellation of the series. Brugel feels "equally as disappointed" about the show's ending now than she did when it happened back in 2021.
"I think I would not have been as disappointed if we had been warned, if the stories had been wrapped up with the same amount of care and just grace that we had been given from season to season," she said. "It just felt like the carpet was ripped out from under everyone, and that the characters weren't honoured in the way that they should have been."
While Brugel is likely more known for her more dramatic roles, Kim's Convenience shows her great range as an actor, and an example of how she likes to jump and forth between different genres.
"It started as a very specific strategy between myself and my agent, in which we were really trying to not have me typecast as a Black, biracial woman in Canada. There were only so many roles available," she said. "And very quickly I realized I was only being offered just the the most stereotypical roles that you can imagine in the '90s and then early 2000s, and so we just decided if I tried to ... seek out different genres, people wouldn't really be able to pin me down."
"Drama is the trickiest for me, I will say. ... I think my personality is not really muted. I'm quite emphatic. I'm a little silly and loose, and for drama, technically, you have to sort of be still, a little more stoic. You can be crazy, but just technically, for me, there's not as much room to improvise and play, and have a lot of fun and take a lot of really crazy swings. And so that's why I feel a little more constricted with drama and that I have to behave."
Among all of Brugel's impressive projects, being a judge on Canada's Drag Race Season 2 will always be a memorable moment for her.
"I only got to do one season and I still love it," she said. "I loved it wholeheartedly. I love drag queens. I love the art of drag. I loved my cast. The experience, it was beautiful."
She added that it's "still a big deal" that she could only participate in one season on the non-union production.
"I haven't watched the seasons afterwards because I can't, and I'm not that kind of person. If I don't get a job or if I lose out to a role, I'll still watch the movie and celebrate the actor."
"But Drag Race, no, no, I can't watch it after my season. I'm too heartbroken. Still, I'll talk to my fellow judges. I talk to them a lot, but I can't watch my chair filled by another."
Collaborating with Jeremy LaLonde and Jonas Chernick, her fellow co-writers for Ashgrove, it all started with an idea to improvise a movie. The result was a psychological thriller set during a water pandemic and Dr. Jennifer Ashgrove, played by Brugel, is the world's best chance for a cure. But experiencing a "blackout," she's instructed to take some time off of work, heading to a rural farmhouse with her husband Jason (Chernick) and their friends.
"I wish that every project that we were able to, specifically actors, were able to go into it like we did with Ashgrove," Brugel said.
But the way Ashgrove came together as a film was actually a surprise to Brugel.
"It was pre-COVID, but [Jeremy LaLonde and Jonas Chernick] had this idea to do sort of a dramatic exercise, in which we would improvise a movie," she explained. "Structure all of the scenes and be quite detailed with the story we wanted to tell, but having the ability to play and have freedom and improvise together."
"That being said, I did not know that behind my back they were creating a different story. And there was a documentary being made about the fact that I thought I was on one path, making one movie, where in reality, they were making a completely separate movie, and I was new to all of the decisions and choices. So all of the reactions are in real time. And I had no idea how the story was going to end, and I did not know that everyone else was in on it, except me."
For another Dark Thriller, Brugel took on the role of Blair Caplan in the Apple TV+ sci-fi, thriller series Dark Matter, and sharing the screen with Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly was a highlight for her.
Teasing what we can expect from Season 2, Brugel gets to really dive into the research for the character, specifically for the quantum physics elements of the show.
"To be completely honest, I thought if I have a couple scenes with either one of them, I would love to have it for my reel," Brugel said.
"I really did it thinking it was just going to be ... a fun role for me to play, not realizing how much I would fall in love with Chicago, with the Chicago crew, the showrunner and creator Blake Crouch and his wife, [Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry]. They're just the nicest, most collaborative people, and they're so generous and and the story is fantastic. The acting is great. It is currently, in my adult life, my dream job."
With The Handmaid's Tale in its sixth and final season and filming of the series spanning 10 years, Brugel's character Rita quickly became, and still is, one of the most beloved characters in the show.
While the series has been a massive success, Brugel is ready to move on to new projects.
"I am eternally grateful for what that show did for my career at 40 years old, in a business that has told me from the beginning that I will expire by then," Brugel highlighted. "But I am thrilled to be able to venture off into other things."
"Staying with the character for 10 years, you get very comfortable, which is beautiful because it can help with performances. ... As an artist you need to be challenged. You need to fail. You need to have to go and research quantum physics. You just need to grow. And I felt like I had grown as much as I possibly could, and I'm thrilled for it, but I'm happy to say goodbye."
While Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel has been particularly impactful for many since it was published, the story was amplified when the show was released, with the resurgence of the red Handmaid's cloak as a symbol in the fight for women's rights around the world.
"I still don't know if I really wrapped my brain around the impact of it, and the only time I am able to is when I go to really remote places around the world, a small towns outside of Hungary and I'm the only visible minority in the area, and people will run and want to hug me and talk to me about Rita," Brugel said.
"The human connection with strangers and the stories that have come out of it are the thing that I really started to realize, oh, this is massive. This is different. It's one thing to be a fan of a show and a character, but it's one thing to be able to connect with people on such an intimate level so quickly that I don't know if I will ever have that again, and that is what I will miss. That is what I do still love and did love about being a part of something like that, with the conversations that were inspired from our show."