You’s Madeline Brewer Killed For This Role

Warning: You finale spoilers ahead. Madeline Brewer manifested her role in You. “I literally love this show,” she says after stopping herself from going on another tangent about what the show means. 

She first watched You back in 2018, when it was still on Lifetime before Netflix, and immediately texted her agent asking her how she could be on it. Coincidentally, her agent also represented Penn Badgley, so she knew the exact people to reach out to. “I think she had their ear a little bit like, “By the way, Madeline Brewer is a big fan,” Brewer says.

Each season, Brewer checked in to see if there was a role available. There wasn’t. That was, until 2024 when showrunners Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo were casting for Bronte, Joe Goldberg’s final girl who, unbeknownst to her, would be the key to his demise after five seasons of murders and manipulation. After a meeting with producers and two chemistry reads with Badgley—one of which he drove down from upstate New York in a snowstorm for—the role was Brewer’s. 

“I’ve met people who are like, ‘You‘re the girl who got the role in You. Los Angeles was in a tizzy over that role. Every girl wanted that role.’” It’s so interesting to now be at a point in my career where I was able to get in there,” Brewer says. 

Brewer didn’t know much about the role when she started filming. “The showrunners told me up through Episode 5. They were like, ‘And then Episode 6… it kind of changes.’ But they didn’t tell me why or what,” she says. “They did say, ‘By the end of the series, Bronte holds Joe’s fate in her hands.’ And I was like, ‘Say less.’” 

She learned exactly how after reading Episode 6 which revealed that “Bronte” was actually Louise—a friend of Joe’s first love interest (and victim) Guinevere Beck—who had been investigating Joe ever since Beck’s mysterious death in Season 1. Together, with a group of other true crime conspiracists, Louise was able to catfish Joe and trick him into falling in love with her before exposing his crimes to the world. “I love that she’s kind of crazy in her own way,” she says. 

The downfall wasn’t immediate, however, as Louise—like many of Joe’s love interests—wrestled with her own romantic feelings for him before coming to the realization about who Joe really was. “In the end, he’s a fucking misogynist,” Brewer says. 

What her realization results in is a nearly 25-minute fight scene in the finale between Joe and Louise that ends with Louise outsmarting Joe at his own game and locking him up forever. (Or so it seems by the time the credits roll.) “There have been many worthy opponents of Joe,” she says. “But Louise is smart.”

Ahead, Brewer—who’s also set to conclude her six-season run on The Handmaid’s Tale on May 27—sat with StyleCaster to break down You’s series finale, how it compares to The Handmaid’s Tale, and Louise’s masterful (and sometimes frustrating) decisions that led to Joe’s eventual capture.

Let’s start with the twist. What was your reaction to the reveal in Episode 6 that Bronte’s real name was Louise and she was Beck’s friend who had been investigating Joe for years.

I loved it. I love that she’s kind of crazy in her own way. She’s daring, trepid and a little bit of a loose screw. I also love that it makes the love affair with Joe that much more complicated because she’s so loyal to her friends, but so confused. She really wrestles with: “I deserve to feel love and to be loved in this kind of magical way.” It’s the same thing we all do, regardless of whether the person we’re dating is a murderer. We all want to believe the best things about them. It’s Joe’s M.O. He decides who he wants the woman he’s dating to be, and when they don’t live up to it, he kills them. Most people just break up. He decides to kill them. I think she was doing a bit of that too: I deserve how wonderful this guy is to me, even though he’s terrifying. But that’s also the tragedy of being a woman dating men. I don’t know what it is in us, but we think sometimes we could change them, even if it’s someone who’s demonstrably unchangeable.

In the end, [Joe is] a fucking misogynist.

Louise makes a lot of decisions that I think viewers will be frustrated with her for. One of which is when she rescued Joe from the fire and didn’t let him die. Why do you think she did that? 

First and foremost, I don’t think Louise is a murderer. I also think the driving force of her friendship with Clayton, Dominique, and Phoenix is the search for justice. Ultimately, she’s saying, “It’s not for me to decide what justice is for you. The way I can facilitate this is give you up to the police and let the justice system hopefully do what’s right.” As we all know, it doesn’t always do right, but on Netflix, it does. Episode 10 is her being like, “What do I do?” She knows if she let him die in the fire, she would have regretted it like, “What if I was wrong?” She’s determined to find out for herself. 

I think viewers will also be surprised by Joe not dying in the end. What was your reaction to the ending? 

It could end one of two ways: He’s dead or he goes to prison. I personally like the ending. Joe feeds off of other people. He’s a vulture. He’s a leech pulling people in. He escapes through people. In prison, he has no access. He can’t do that to anyone anymore, which is the thing that will make him the most miserable. It’s the worst possible fate for him. For him, it’s a fate worse than death to not have anyone to manipulate and no one to fall in love with and try to rewrite the history and sins of his past. He has to sit there and think about it. 

Do you think Joe learned his lesson in the end? 

No, he’s still blaming everyone else. His voiceover blames the women who fall in love with men like him. In the end, he’s a fucking misogynist. He acts like he’s so evolved, but deep down, he had a horrible relationship with his mother and couldn’t save her and thinks that all women need saving. When they don’t, he has to provide them with a situation in which they must be saved, and he must be the one to do it. He has a savior complex. When a woman doesn’t need him, he thinks she should be dead. That’s why he hates Peach in Season 1. It’s what makes him find Love repulsive at a certain point. She’s as ugly inside as he is and she doesn’t need him. She reflects him back to himself. He’s not just damaged. He hates women. 

Joe has never been painted as just the villain on You, especially in the last season where viewers learn more about his backstory. What do you think the purpose is in humanizing Joe? 

That’s why the show is so good. You do see his vulnerabilities. You do fall in love with him. Honestly, Penn Badgley is impossible not to fall in love with. He’s the charm and the charisma. He’s a lovable person and character. What I love about the show is it confronts us with what we’re willing to accept from a beautiful white man. What we’re willing to let him get away with because of his issues in his past. You’ve got white privilege. You’ve got pretty privilege. You’ve got male privilege. You’ve got skinny privilege. You’ve got masculine privilege. You’ve got educated privilege. There are so many things that allow him to get away with what he gets away with. We try to deny all those things and just be like, “He’s a nice guy.” But a master manipulator like Joe uses all of them to his advantage.

[Joe’s] not just damaged. He hates women. 

Do you think Joe had real feelings for any of his love interests? 

No, I don’t think that he is capable of that. He is an empty person who needs to fill a void in himself. It feels like love, and it looks like love, but I don’t think it’s really love. He’s an empty person who is trying to fill himself up with all of these different people. It masquerades as love. Maybe it feels like love to him, but it’s not, because love is not murdering someone when they stop living up to the pedestal you put them on. Love is not killing people for another person. 

There are so many people who have tried to take down Joe over the course of the show. Why do you think Louise was the one able to do it? 

Because she’s a bad bitch. There have been many worthy opponents of Joe. He’s outsmarted them or outstrengthed them. But Louise is smart, and she plays to her own strengths of trying to play a part until the moment is right. What was Beck’s demise? She found the stuff in the ceiling and freaked out. That doesn’t make her stupid. She’s maybe just not as savvy or she’s utterly horrified by death. But I think Louise has spent years in this place of looking at crime scene photos and thinking about the truly horrific things he’s done. Going into it knowing he might be a murderer, she’s prepared for that fact to be true. He can’t really take her by surprise. 

There have been many worthy opponents of Joe. But Louise is smart

In the finale, the perspective switches and Louise does the voiceover. What do you think the significance of that was? 

The voiceover we hear from Joe is oftentimes dark. He has this thing inside him that’s always telling him he’s bad and wrong. It’s not even a conscience. It’s this kind of evil voice inside of his head. I think the showruners wanted to give Louise some of that like, “You’re a fucking idiot. What are you doing?” They invite us to hear that, because otherwise we might just read her as knowing nothing. We have to invite the audience inside her mind to know that she knows what the game is. We see her in real time being like, “This is happening. OK, there’s the bed. OK, I’ve got to go upstairs. He’s acting a little bit strange. He knows I’m lying. How do I do this?” It’s fun as an audience member to be there with her, and for once, to be inside of the mind of someone other than Joe.

How do you think You’s series finale compares to The Handmaid’s Tale’s series finale? 

You goes out with a bang. Handmaid’s Tale goes out with… don’t get me wrong, the whole season is a bang. But that final episode is a really beautiful homecoming. Both for June and some of her relationships throughout the whole series, but also callbacks to earlier seasons. We started shooting Handmaid’s Tale in 2016 during the 2016 election. We were finishing up The Handmaid’s Tale final season during the 2024 election. Sometimes it feels simultaneously like we have helped the world and also like we’ve done nothing. Like nothing has changed. I will say this season feels a lot more hopeful. It feels more like a call to action. It feels like it would give viewers a lot more hope.

What can you say about where Janine ends up in the finale? 

Janine is in a totally different place than we’ve ever seen her. I was watching some clips from Season 1, and I was like, “Who the hell is that?” She’s changed. I’ve changed. We’ve naturally, grown together. Janine’s M.O. was operating inside the clouds and existing. That’s how she survived. But now she’s two feet planted on the ground, very practical, eyes wide open — eye wide open — I’m very proud of where she ended up.

There’s news of a spinoff, The Testaments. Would you ever reprise your role for it?

Never say never. I do feel that Janine and I have completed our circle. I’ve given her everything I can give her from where she is, and she’s given me everything she can give me. We are old friends. Maybe I won’t see her for a long time.

Photographer: George Chinsee

Creative Director: Stephanie Cui

Makeup: Dani Parkes for Exclusive Artists

Hair: Michaella Garfinkel