Madeline Brewer says she was shocked by the haters who criticized her appearance in the final season of Netflix’s “You.”
In a new interview with People, the actor, who starred as Louise “Brontë” Flannery in the thriller series, said she’s aware she’s “not everybody’s cup of tea” but admitted she felt blindsided by the online hate over her looks.
“I didn’t expect people to like Brontë, but I didn’t expect them to call me ugly, because I’m not,” she told the outlet in a story published Sunday. “I get that I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, but I’m not ugly.”
In the fifth and final season of “You,” Brontë orchestrates the take down and arrest the beloved serial killer and so-called lover boy Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) after he spent years murdering dozens of people.
Brewer, 33, who called herself a “huge fan” of the show, said the criticism of her appearance particularly threw her for a loop considering that women make up the “largest fan base” of the show.
“I had thought that the largest fan base of this show is women, young women, and I never anticipated the amount of misogyny to be fired at me,” she continued.
The former “Handmaid’s Tale” actor said she takes the criticisms in stride because it’s “par for the course” of being in Hollywood, but admitted her younger self, who used to be bullied, would have been troubled by it. Namely, the “triggering” online comments claiming she needs plastic surgery.
“I feel very grateful that this didn’t happen at an earlier time in my life. If this had happened when I was 25, I would have crumbled because I wasn’t in therapy yet,” she says. “Being in my 30s, I don’t care. I knew I could handle it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Brewer shared her theory about why social media users attacked her looks.
“I think that when people are confronted with that misogyny and that deconstruction of their hero, it makes them upset,” she said of Goldberg’s kismet in the show. “Especially pisses them off that it was a woman. It was a woman to do it. And it was also a new woman, and a woman that they might not find attractive.”
She surmised that in order for viewers to “deal with” the outcome, “they can’t help but get on their cell phones and comment on my pictures and go, ‘Oh, you’re so ugly. You look like a goblin.’”
Brewer added: “And I’m like, ‘Girl, lighten up. I’m not ugly.’”
Seasons 1-5 of “You” are streaming on Netflix.
