And the actress who plays the ill-fated handmaid, Madeline Brewer , prepared for the horrors of her character and those particularly disturbing scenes by speaking with rape survivors. "I did what research I could about people who are survivors of sexual assault and rape, how it shapes them going forward and how they dealt with being victim shamed — being told that if they were wearing something different it wouldn’t have happened, or if they weren’t in that place at that time it wouldn’t have happened," Brewer told The Hollywood Reporter . "I wanted to know how that affected them. That is part of what shaped Janine and why she needed to escape in her mind. That was a horror; it’s too difficult for her. When she has all of these people telling her this horrific thing that happened to her is her fault, it makes her question whether it was her fault. It was very important to me to play an accurate representation of someone talking about their sexual assault in that scene."