‘The Handmaid’s Tale:’ Yvonne Strahovski on Bringing Personal Experience to Serena’s ‘Empowering’ Birthing Scene

Yvonne Strahovski’s Serena Joy Waterford is one of television’s most complicated villains.

How much sympathy should we extend to a woman complicit in the crimes of her husband (Joseph Fiennes)?  Serena is a token White Feminist, benefiting from her position and hungry for power. But undeniably, she is also a victim of the abusive theocratic regime she helped put in place. It is a testament to Strahovski’s performance that the audiences’ sentiments toward Serena can shift on a dime—she is a monster capable of inflicting terror. But she’s also a woman who longs for motherhood. A dream that comes to pass in season five. Drawing from her own experiences, Strahovski sought to bring a new level of realism to the portrayal of the birthing experience.

Here in an interview with Awards Daily, Strahovski discusses shaping Serena’s long-awaited delivery, The Handmaid’s Tale’s lasting relevance, and the “trauma bonding” that holds June (Elisabeth Moss) and Serena together.

Awards Daily: I wanted to start by taking your temperature on season five of The Handmaid’s Tale. What was this latest return to Gilead like for you? 

Yvonne Strahovski: I have very fond memories of this last season. It was very intense for me and very rewarding, actually. And kind of personal. I always think back to the middle of the season and the birth scene and how personal that felt to me—being a mom of two boys and wanting to rewrite the TV birth in my own way. Not rewrite, literally, but rewrite meaning present it in a way that feels a little bit closer to home in how I experienced my own births. It was empowering and wonderful as an artist to get creative about something I feel so passionate about in real life.

It was so amazing to be able to do that whole episode. It was so much fun. I know that’s a weird word to use, but it was. Working with the director and Lizzie, with whom I had all my scenes, on making that episode and physicalizing the birth in a certain way was terrific.

I actually birthed my second child at home, so I had this idea of physicalizing certain moments in that birth scene with Lizzie, when I was leaning with my arms on her, which we did do, and just being able to talk about all of that and infuse so many of those personal moments into the scene was really extraordinary. I’m grateful to have that opportunity.

AD: Watching the show, and even in telling people in my life that I was going to speak to you, the biggest question that came up was, how do you manage those emotionally difficult scenes? It’s a question that I asked Elisabeth as well. It’s just astounding to me. Do you have a process? Do you stay in character

YS: I definitely do not stay in character. That would be too much. I’ve never done that. I think it kind of comes naturally. I’ve been doing this for so long. between action and cut, you’re on, and then you’re off. That’s just how it goes. The material is so intense, but at the same time, that is what I love to do. It’s a time to express myself as an artist and get creative. And it’s a time for me to have permission to play and perform a scene in any way that I feel I want to or in any way that comes to me intuitively. It’s just such a fun process for me. There have been a few moments during this series that have felt a bit more in my face and a bit too close to home, where it was a little harder to separate from what we were doing. But I’m so lucky to come to work and have my creative expression. 

AD: Would you be comfortable telling me what those more intense moments were?

YS: I mean, the one where Serena holds June down while she’s nine months pregnant, and Commander Waterford performs the ceremony to get her to start her birth. Those kinds of scenes felt kind of too much and icky. And I think it was also kind of confronting as a woman to be playing the role or partaking in the role of the rapist, which is not something I ever would have done as an actor in my career. That’s the most significant example that comes to my mind. 

AD: It’s so fascinating to me that as The Handmaid’s Tale progresses, it becomes more and more prescient, and the parallels to our real lives increase. What is it like to be on the other side and play that?

YS: Yeah. It’s not something that I ever anticipated. It definitely comes as a surprise to me every year how close to home we really are. I joke about how it seems like the writers have a crystal ball, and we seem to very strongly parallel against the current themes in the news. It’s wild to feel like we’ve become symbols of elements of the politics that go on in the world. Certainly, the handmaid’s red outfit has become very much something that’s been used in the real world as a political statement in protest.

I don’t know that we ever thought that it would be so realistic in so many ways. I remember being on set in season one and doing these scenes and feeling like, ‘Wow, this is going to be amazing.’ I felt that. I felt like watching everyone get into these characters and how layered everything was; the writing and the production design. I remember thinking, this is going to be special, but never did I imagine that it would take on the scope that it has. 

AD: And speaking of parallels, I feel like season five was very much a two-hander between June and Serena. What are your thoughts on where these two women find themselves, the evolution of their relationship, and how they influence one another?

YS: The crossovers are fascinating; how June and Serena become each other in flickers or moments. One represents good, and one represents bad, but there are crossovers. I remember seeing a YouTube clip that someone had put together, the June and Serena crossovers of how they become each other and learn from each other, good and bad. And it’s really fascinating. They’re such opposing forces but also mirrors of one another. I couldn’t be more excited and grateful to have a role like this where I get to play with so much. I read these scenes and think, ‘Wow, there’s a world of possibilities of how to play this scene.’ It’s endless, and it’s a credit to everyone who’s creating this and working on this show. Especially with Serena, in getting to play her, there’s just so much to dive into.

AD: I feel like, with Serena, my feelings toward her can literally change in the span of one scene, in one look that she gives. I’ve read interviews where you talk about trying not to judge her. How do you define your relationship to Serena? Do you feel like you understand her? Are there still decisions that she makes that shock you?

YS: Yeah, for the most part, I very much understand her. I definitely don’t play the role from a judgment perspective. I don’t think I could play it if I did it that way. I’ve always come at her from a very emotional, personalized angle. 

I never knew she was going to be this kind of a person. Initially, when I read the first few episodes when the show was created, I remember thinking, Wow, here is a woman who has clearly been betrayed by her husband with the previous handmaid, the first Offred. There’s a betrayal here. There’s distrust. Something is going on between them and their marriage. She doesn’t trust him, and she’s lonely and has no one in her corner. I went from there. I built upon these building blocks every episode, every season, to create this woman who’s very emotionally vulnerable but masks it all with this very hard and bitter exterior.

AD: At this point, do you think Serena still believes in the principles of Gilead? Or is it her ego driving her forward? What are her motivations?

YS: I don’t know about her values much anymore. I don’t think she’s so set in them. I think she doesn’t have anywhere to go, and the only thing she can lean on, just out of pure survival, is her Gilean values. That’s her ticket, and she knows that. Gilead is her ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card,’ where she can have the most success and power and build her way up. It’s the only option. I don’t know what she would do in any other universe, given that she is quite power-hungry and she is narcissistic in the way that she wants to have a voice and vocalize her thoughts on what it means to be a woman. I think that’s the perfect avenue for her. 

AD: We see several moments throughout season five where both June and Serena have the opportunity to take each other out, and they don’t. It’s like they’re drawn to each other and can’t let each other go. Why do you think that is? 

YS: I think it’s just sort of some version of trauma bonding between them for their own reasons—very, very different reasons. I also think there is a humanity to each of these characters. As much as we don’t want to admit it, Serena does have a gram of humanity in her. Sometimes she does lean into that. You insert babies and children into the picture, and the stakes get a lot higher, and there’s an instant common ground and understanding. However, that plays out; whatever mistakes Serena makes, she makes plenty of them. It’s just such a complicated relationship for all those reasons and probably 500 more that I can’t even think of right now or don’t have time to mention. 

AD: Serena has moments of intense anger, but there’s a lot of internal hurt and rage there. How do you portray those quieter moments? 

YS: I think it goes back to that emotional groundwork that I started with Serena, which is that we all as humans have to function in a world with other humans. We all have our own triggers, traumas, scars, and things that have wounded us in the past, and it is about that core human aspect. It’s about the heart, what isn’t mended, and where Serena operates from within that. I think it’s also a given that almost everyone in Gilead is a character in survival mode; I think all of those emotional beats are significantly heightened and make people behave in different ways to survive.

The Handmaid’s Tale is streaming on Hulu.