Madeline Brewer Reacts to 'You' Fans Calling Her Ugly
Madeline Brewer is opening up about trolls.
The 33-year-old actress got candid following criticism she received for her physical appearance as Brontë, also known as Louise Flannery, in You Season 5.
During a conversation with People, she was asked if she was surprised by the response by some fans to her character.
“A little bit. I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect people to like Brontë, but I didn’t expect them to call me ugly, because I’m not,” she said.
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“I get that I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, but I’m not ugly,” she went on.
“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.”
As a “huge fan” of the show, she said she was “excited to be a part of that world” after signing on for the final season of the series
“I think that when people are confronted with that misogyny and that deconstruction of their hero, it makes them upset,” she said of Joe’s fate. “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.”
“So all of that to deal with, 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,’” she went on. “And I’m like, ‘Girl, lighten up. I’m not ugly.’”
Madeline said she was bullied as a child, and comments suggesting she needed plastic surgery “triggered” her.
“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 admitted. “Being in my 30s, I don’t care. I knew I could handle it.”
She added that criticism is “par for the course” of being an actor, and “now I don’t give a f–k. As long as they’re doing it to me and not somebody who can’t handle it, bring it on.”
She also looks to her fiancé, cinematographer Jack Thompson-Roylance, for support.
“He just thinks the sun shines out of my butt, and he thinks that I’m the most beautiful woman in the whole world. He’s actually the only opinion that really matters to me,” she said.
Find out who will be her bridesmaids at her upcoming wedding!