‘I was devastated': Yvonne Strahovski farewells The Handmaid's Tale

Sydney Morning Herald

27-05-2025

While shooting the seventh episode of the final season of The Handmaid's Tale, Yvonne Strahovski was ready to shed her character, Serena Joy. 'I have thought about it a lot, and I'm very excited to let her go, but it's very emotional,' Strahovski says on set, just before Christmas. 'She is very intensely depressing. And there's just so much weight on this character. There's a feeling that I have for each character, and this one's just very tight and bitter and sort of held together. And as much as I don't take anything home, or I don't carry around with me, I think I do still on some level. And whenever you finish something, there is just this invisible thing that comes off your shoulders.'
Three months later, after shooting wrapped, Strahovski talks to TV writer Jacqueline Cutler about what the role meant to her.
Warning: This story contains spoilers for the final season of The Handmaid's Tale.
Now that it has ended, do you feel the same way?
When I saw you, I was thinking I was going to feel like throwing a party and then I was done with her. Serena is a lot. She's a handful. It's just a lot of bitterness. It's a lot of grief she carries. It's a lot of resentment. It's a lot of negativity in your cortisol levels. I really thought I'm going to be free, and it was the total opposite. I was devastated.
How was this season different from the first five?
Just knowing that it was coming to an end, and it was all the last this and the last that. Then having to deal with the [Los Angeles] fires at the same time, it was really strange. The amount of grief ending a show is huge, especially this show and this character. She feels like a friend. Even though she's awful, she's a friend. And then grieving, saying goodbye to the city. I was not in and out. Most of the actors are in and out; you fly in and out for your days. You go back home. My family, we all moved. We made a life there in Toronto. We built a community when the kid was in school.
It's a whole thing packing up 10 years of your life in the city, so there was that. I think for this season, as a character, it was just extraordinary. I feel like it's my favourite season because it really is the most we've ever seen her be the most real – not putting on this sort of face of I'm playing the role of the wife.
What scenes haunt you?
Definitely any ceremony, especially the one when June was pregnant, and we forced her into the rape. Serena ended up doing the right thing, passing the baby over. She still had her own emotions about it.
It was devastating for her, for all the complicated reasons, even though she had been doing a horrible thing, obviously, by having a handmaid in the first place and being part of this whole system. The chopping off the finger when she tried to stand up for women speaking, and she was punished for that when Commander Waterford beat her in his office.
Any moments from the farewell season linger?
From this season, the first thing that came to my mind was after I get married to Josh Charles's character. We get married and it's truly a love connection. It's amazing. This is a moment where we see Serena having probably the most joyful moment out of the whole show. At her wedding, she's the queen bee, and she's loving every minute. And they come home to the new home, where she thinks she's doing a wonderful job of reforming Gilead so that there are no handmaids, and things are better.
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They walk into the house, and he says, 'We got a gift from a commander.' And I turned around and there's a handmaid kneeling in the office.
I hadn't felt that feeling since those previous episodes, and it was so real to me, to see, to be in a commander's house as a wife, and see the handmaid kneeling again in the office. Serena has not been in that environment for a while. She's been in detention. She's been in all kinds of places but that was so enraging to me personally. And, of course, there's a big blowout fight that happens between Serena and her new husband. It's a great scene, but that was very, very haunting.
How did this role change your career?
It was the role that got me recognised in terms of the awards circuit, which was really lovely. It's definitely been a huge moment for me to be Serena on this critically acclaimed show.
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My first show ever was Chuck. It was an action dramedy, lighthearted. As every actor will probably tell you, you get boxed into what people see you do first off, and then it's hard to change gears and steer your career a certain way. And it really is a combination of a lot of hard work and being brave to say no to the jobs that are coming to you that are the same as the other one and holding out a little bit and steering it.
And having a great team behind you, too, to help you find the next opportunity. Then, when you get that foot in the door, you grab it with everything you've got, and hopefully, it goes your way. So, this role for me is that. It definitely switched gears for me, for my career, and I'm forever grateful. I don't know that words can describe how much I appreciate everything that I've gotten to do through this role, the scenes and the nuances. There are TV shows that you can land on for many years, and you'll die a creative death. I never once died a creative death on this show.