The Cast Of The Handmaid's Tale Is Gorgeous In Real Life

In 2025, the long-running Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's seminal novel "The Handmaid's Tale" finally came to a close. Since the series premiered in 2017, fans watched have watched as a group of Handmaids — women kept as slaves, meant only to reproduce — instigated an open rebellion against the repressive theocracy of Gilead. Led by June (Elisabeth Moss), the series escalated and escalated until it became an all-out war for the soul of the country.

The show could be pretty drab-looking — imagine a version of the Capitol from "The Hunger Games" without all the fabulous fashion — but it was captivating anyway thanks to its stellar cast. Moss, for example, wasn't just the series lead, she also occasionally directed the show. She told IndieWire that if the show ever feels like it hits too close to home, it may help to remember that off-screen, in real life, these are actors.

"The experience of making this show is so different from what you see. We have such a great time. We have so many wonderful people on set who are funny and lovely and doing their best work and really trying to push themselves," she said. "I understand that the experience watching it is obviously much darker, because that's the subject matter ... But our experience and my experience of the last nine years has been so different." The cast of "The Handmaid's Tale" is, after all, gorgeous in real life.

When "The Handmaid's Tale" began, Elisabeth Moss's character June was known as Offred, a nod to the fact that she belonged to a man named Fred (Joseph Fiennes). Over the course of the series, she escaped and became quite the leader, reclaiming her own identity and inspiring numerous other women to do the same.

In addition to "The Handmaid's Tale," Moss is a full-fledged movie star. She has starred in "Us" and "The Invisible Man," and she's also led television shows like "The Veil." Moss herself has transformed significantly since she started acting on "The Handmaid's Tale." After all, like her character, in 2024, she became a mother. "I can't watch certain scenes. When a person used to come up to me and say, 'I just had a baby, and I can't watch the show,' I had a little judgment, like, 'Oh, God, get over it,'" she told Variety. "Now, I totally get it. There are concepts I can't think about; there are articles I can't read in the news."

Off-screen, Moss loves fashion, expressing herself on red carpets the world over. Back in 2013, while she starred on "Mad Men," Moss even guest-judged an episode of "Project Runway." She told Marie Claire that she was bowled over by the designers' fashion sense, musing, "I couldn't make a sheet to put over your body! I wouldn't even be able to make the hole for your head!"

Not every woman in Gilead is only meant to reproduce. There's a whole other class of women called Aunts, and that includes Ann Dowd's character Aunt Lydia. She's one of the series' antagonists, an often-frightening woman who keeps the handmaids in line by aiding in their re-education. In the final episodes of the show, however, Aunt Lydia appears to have a revelation of sorts, which sets up the upcoming sequel series, "The Testaments." Dowd told TV Insider, "She will never be the same again ... She's changed profoundly."

Aunt Lydia is intentionally dressed down, but in real life, Dowd is a character actor who isn't afraid to get glam for a red carpet. She's a bit older than many of her co-stars, but that's how she likes it. After all, Dowd has put in the work, steadily building a great reputation as one of the most reliably-great actors in the business. She told Glamour that she remembered early in her career, going to work as a waiter while, across the street, a classmate attended the movie premiere of their first starring role. She took some decades to reach that level, but she had faith in herself. "Pay attention to where you are. Celebrate the small victories," she said. "Every time I got a role, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I didn't care if I had two lines or if it was a Broadway opening, which was thrilling. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, someone said yes.'"

Yvonne Strahovski played Serena Joy Waterford on "The Handmaid's Tale." She starts the series as an antagonist — the wife of the commander who owns June — but over the course of the show, she becomes something more complex, at times both an ally and a foe. Though Serena survives the show, Strahovski told The Hollywood Reporter that she wouldn't have minded if the writers had instead killed her off. "If it was dramatic and awful and painful and tragic, I thought the audience would feel really satisfied," she said. "I certainly felt like she had it coming, but where we actually end up is in a space that holds a lot more hope."

Serena gets put through the wringer, but in real life, the former "Chuck" star is often called upon to play glamorous characters. She's been in "Stateless," "Scrambled," and "Teacup," and on the red carpet, she can always be counted on to show out. Still, she told PopSugar that she feels uncomfortable about that, and her relationship with beauty has changed over the years. "There's an expectation — or there used to be — that as an actress you had to be 'pretty' and 'presentable' and 'fashionable.' That part was the part that I rejected, but I still played along because I felt the pressure," she said. "Where I've arrived is that it's whatever makes you feel good, whatever you need or want, or however you choose to express yourself."

Madeline Brewer played Janine throughout "The Handmaid's Tale," one of the most distinctive-looking handmaids; After all, Janine loses an eye, leading her to wear a striking eyepatch in the final stretch of the show. Brewer told The Hollywood Reporter that people don't tend to recognize her from the show out in the wild, even though she received an Emmy nomination for her role. "If you see me out in the world with my sweatpants on, my hair up and sunglasses on, you might not see Janine, especially if my hair is straight," she said. "But if I go out with my curly hair, people do tend to say something."

In addition to taking Janine through to the end of "The Handmaid's Tale," Brewer also starred in the final season of Netflix's thriller "You." That character was very different than her Gilead counterpart, as Brewer noted to THR. "It was so fun to not have an eye patch, just to get cute little clothes and be a cute girl," she laughed.

You may also recognize Brewer from roles like "Orange is the New Black," "Hustlers," and "Cam." If you see her on a red carpet, though, chances are you won't be reminded of any of her characters. She explained to Marie Claire, "I don't really like to bring my character too much to the carpet ... I don't like to cross that boundary because [it's] a really important boundary I have to keep with myself and a character — to keep them at work and me at home."

June isn't alone throughout "The Handmaid's Tale." She has a couple of love interests over the course of the series, including Luke, played by O-T Fagbenle. Prior to the fall of Gilead, they're married and have a child together. But the couple later reunites, which forces them to make some difficult decisions between protecting their family and fighting to liberate the country. Fagbenle told The Hollywood Reporter that shooting the final season meant something more important to his relationship with his co-star, Elisabeth Moss: he'd gotten to see her as a mother in real life. "On day one [of filming the final season], for me, the big thing I remember was just meeting my dear friend, my colleague and knowing she'd been through this extraordinary experience," he said.

The strikingly-handsome Fagbenle has become quite the leading man since he began starring on "The Handmaid's Tale." He played Barack Obama in the Showtime show, "The First Lady," and he's also been on buzzy shows like "No Good Deed" and "Presumed Innocent." That's not to mention his movie career, including in Marvel's "Black Widow." Seeing Fagbenle in those contexts, it's no wonder June finds him irresistible.

In the early days of "The Handmaid's Tale," Samira Wiley played Moira, June's friend from before Gilead who she later reunites with. Wiley spent a few seasons in the background of the show's main storyline, but by the final season, Moira emerges as one of the show's most essential revolutionaries. Wiley told The Hollywood Reporter that she was glad to get back to filming the show's final season, and she was very pleased by where Moira ended up. "This is the Moira that I fell in love with," she said. "This is the Moira that I said yes to when I was offered the job. This is the Moira that Margaret Atwood wrote about in 1985 when she wrote 'The Handmaid's Tale'; that Moira who is driven by fire and fight and light."

Wiley is no stranger to the spotlight. You'll remember she was part of the cast of "Orange is the New Black," playing fan-favorite character Poussey. As her fame has grown, Wiley has had to find her place in the fashion industry, too, as we expect our actors to look a certain way even off-screen. Speaking with Glamour, she noted that her skin color and her natural hair were rarely represented in the beauty world. "You couldn't be a spokesperson for what was sexy. You were told over and over again how much you weren't those things, just by ads being in your face," she said. "I don't know necessarily if I really have felt like I have seen myself represented before I was able to be the one representing myself."

In the early seasons of "The Handmaid's Tale," before the scope of the show widened to include full-on revolution, much of the drama revolved around June's life as a slave to Commander Fred Waterford, as played by Joseph Fiennes. He kept her around so that she could bear his children, and as you might imagine, that eventually led to June's rebellion. Commander Waterford met a very violent, very brutal end in the show's 4th season, and Fiennes told Vanity Fair that it was more than justified. "Given the length of time June has been executing that need to revenge, to bring closure — the paradox being that it inevitably doesn't bring closure, and in fact perpetuates the issue; she becomes the monster she seeks to destroy — we needed that time to see the full departure of the high spiritual June into the low, vengeful angel," he mused.

Fiennes first came to international attention in "Shakespeare in Love," the movie that won Gwyneth Paltrow an Oscar. He played a rakishly-handsome version of the Bard in that movie, but he spent much of the ensuing decades on television, however, even taking breaks from acting. It was all a rebellion against the heartthrob status he was afraid of being typecast as. He told Esquire, "There's always going to be a Next Big Thing and a hottest this and the sexiest that. That's the nature of the beast, but I didn't want to be involved in it."

Ever Carradine played Naomi on "The Handmaid's Tale," a character who appears intermittently at first and gradually becomes a major player in the show's existential battle between oppression and revolution. She told Deadline that she was grateful to be bumped up to series regular status, ruminating, "As an actor, this is such a job of limited security. So, more than anything, to be a regular, it just meant that I knew my comings and goings ... It really meant a lot to me to finish this show with the cast as a regular at all sorts of fun finale events."

Carradine has been acting for a while in shows like "Runaways," "Commander in Chief," "Lucky," "Once and Again," and many more. Off-screen, she's been something of a style icon, as she discussed with The Particulars. She told the fashion blog that her style is shaped by being from California and particularly Laurel Canyon, explaining, "I think that the beauty of growing up in California is that anything goes. It's all really okay ... So yeah, I think anything goes, sort of, gives you luxury to just put on whatever you want!"

Max Minghella played Nick on "The Handmaid's Tale," June's other main love interest aside from her husband. He's initially an antagonist, an agent of Gilead, but, as time goes on, he's revealed to be far more sympathetic to the rebellion than he initially lets on. Speaking with Variety, Minghella too showed his sympathy for the victims of "Handmaid's"-style misogyny through the years, pointing out that Margaret Atwood's novel is a text from the '80s that resonates today, not just because she was predicting the future, but because she was aware of the past. "We're guilty of thinking that something is new when it's actually cyclical in our history. We often think some of the ideas we're engaging with are happening to us for the first time, when they echo in eternity," he said.

Minghella has played a number of dashing characters on and off screen, including in "The Social Network." He first made his name in "Art School Confidential," however, and he told InStyle that his costume for that movie was the worst thing he's ever been made to wear. "I had to wear a beret and I found every moment of it truly humiliating," he said. "I remember being completely traumatized by it."

In the early years of "The Handmaid's Tale," much of the discussion about the show revolved around Alexis Bledel's stunning turn as Emily. She even won an Emmy for her nuanced, heartbreaking portrayal of one of the most intelligent, rebellious handmaids of them all. She told The Hollywood Reporter that her character's experience with Female Genital Mutilation was extremely difficult to process, recalling, "It was deeply upsetting to even imagine Emily going through something like that — being captured, powerless, with no say over her body." Ultimately, Bledel left the show after its 4th season, with a surprise appearance in the series finale.

Fans have watched Bledel's stunning transformation on screen thanks to her role in "Gilmore Girls," taking Rory from high school through college and beyond, thanks to the Netflix revival. Bledel herself has been a red carpet mainstay since she was young, telling Seventeen that she had to develop her own style during some pretty up-and-down times for fashion. "I don't want to diss a brand, but there were a lot of kids who wore shirts with logos all the way down the sleeve and on the chest," she said. "I remember one trend that I really liked, though — when everyone dressed like they did in the movie 'Clueless.' I thought that was great."

Amanda Brugel played Rita Blue on "The Handmaid's Tale," a servant who works for the Waterfords. It was the perfect part for Brugel, who told The Hollywood Reporter that she actually wrote her thesis on the character decades before being cast on the show. "I'm most interested in the person who is the least featured. They're able to get away with a lot," she said. "I thought she was mysterious and strong and interesting in a way that wasn't the same as June or Serena Joy. I loved her from the beginning."

Off-screen, Brugel is Canadian, and she's such a fashion icon there that she was once a judge on "Canada's Drag Race." Speaking with Melina Morry, Brugel reflected on the beauty scene in her native land, noting her love for a Montreal-based brand called UNLTTD. "I love their idea behind creating silhouettes for a powerful woman as well as a sexy woman," she said. "They can be the same thing, they can be synonymous." For the record, Brugel is dating a fellow actor — fiancé Aidan Shipley — like many of the real-life partners of "The Handmaid's Tale" cast.

Nina Kiri played Alma on "The Handmaid's Tale," a reliably-great character who appeared in the show's first few seasons and came back for the very end. In those early days, Kiri was often very thoughtful about the way she discussed the series. She told the Television Academy Foundation that the show's source material gave not just a particular resonance but an important takeaway message, noting, "When someone's as aware as Margaret Atwood is, history has this way of like, not being linear, and I think it's very cyclical ... Where we're gonna be in 30 years is based on what difference we make. It's based on us being conscious of people around us, and being good people with morals."

Kiri has also starred in projects with difficult, important topics and dystopian themes, like "Easy Land," "See," and "Fingernails." She explained to Infected Ear that she's been drawn to those kinds of stories ever since starring on "The Handmaid's Tale," saying, "In terms of story and cultural impact, I think the show has made certain cultural critiques very mainstream. Everyone behind it that I have met, both cast and crew, are all really intelligent people who are not only socially aware, but are able to transfer their awareness on the project."