Who Plays Bronte In Netflix's You Season 5

This article contains discussions of addiction, mental health, and suicide.

In the 5th and final season of "You" — the soapy, heightened Netflix drama that features Penn Badgley as killing machine Joe Goldberg — we reunite with some established characters and meet some new ones, one of whom is Madeline Brewer's character Bronte. A playwright who's been breaking into Mooney's (the bookstore where Joe worked in the show's debut season and which he now owns thanks to his super-wealthy wife Kate Lockwood, played by Charlotte Ritchie) and ends up working there, Bronte, who seems to have christened herself after the family of famous authors that included Kate, Charlotte, Emily, and Elizabeth, immediately catches Joe's eye. Even though he's ostensibly happily married to Kate — whose wealth, privilege, and influence allowed Joe to reclaim his name and identity after pretending to be Jonathan Moore in London in season 4 — Joe finds himself drawn to Bronte, and if you've ever seen this show before, I bet you can figure out where this is all going. (Nowhere good for Bronte, probably.)

New Jersey native Brewer has been working pretty steadily on both the big and small screen for years now, and her role as Bronte on "You" finally elevates her from supporting player to a bonafide lead. (As season 5 of "You" continues, Bronte becomes more and more crucial to the story, but I won't spoil that right now.) So where have you seen Brewer before? On two pretty popular TV dramas, actually.

Netflix got into the prestige TV drama game in 2013 with "Orange is the New Black," Jenji Kohan's series based on a memoir by Piper Kerman (an author who did actually spend time behind bars). Though the story is presented as Piper's — Kerman's stand-in played by Taylor Schilling — her time at Litchfield Penitentiary gives the show an opportunity to highlight the stories and backgrounds of other women, including and especially queer women, trans women, and women of color. (Notably, "Orange is the New Black" gave a major platform to trans actress and activist Laverne Cox, who earned an Emmy nod for her role as trans inmate Sophia Burset and became a huge star as a result.) Madeline Brewer only appears on season 1 of the series, but her arc as inmate Tricia Miller certainly set the tone for just how dark this show would get.

We learn pretty quickly that illicit substances are flowing freely through Litchfield despite the administrator's efforts to figure out how, and Tricia, who was struggling with addiction before her incarceration, is one of the people using said substances in the prison. (Through flashbacks, we also learn why Tricia ended up at Litchfield in the first place; she shoplifted to support her addiction and stay alive while she's unhoused, but also kept a running list of everything she stole, hoping to eventually pay her victims back.) Tricia starts going through withdrawal after losing access to drugs, and when we learn that corrections officer George "Pornstache" Mendez (Pablo Schreiber) is facilitating the drug trade in the prison for his own profit, he supplies her. Tricia overdoses and dies in a supply closet, and when Mendez realizes this, he hangs her from the ceiling and stages a scene suggesting she died by suicide. It's a deeply harrowing plotline performed beautifully by Brewer, showing precisely how corrupt the American prison system can be and how people working within it can and will abuse inmates for their own gain.

Based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel of the same name, "The Handmaid's Tale" started its run on Hulu in 2017 and cast Madeline Brewer as Janine (a character who appears in the book as well, albeit in a much smaller role). When we first meet Janine, she belongs to a commander named Warren (Stephen Kunken) — giving her the name "Ofwarren" — and she's pretty friendly with the show's main character June (Elisabeth Moss), who, at that point, is "Offred" (she's the handmaid to Joseph Fiennes' commander Fred Waterford). Before the United States became the religious totalitarian state known as Gilead, Janine worked as a waitress and had a son named Caleb (who, it's later revealed, died in a car accident shortly after the rise of Gilead), and she starts her training as a handmaid right at the same time that June does. Janine is initially obstinate and defiant towards the women supporting the regime of Gilead — including Ann Dowd's terrifying Aunt Lydia — at the Red Center, and as punishment for trying to fight back, her right eye is removed.

After that frankly horrifying ordeal, Janine experiences serious mental health issues, believing that Warren is in love with her and "abducting" the baby they have together (in Gilead, babies produced by handmaids are immediately given over to the high-ranking wives of their respective commanders). She's sent to the Colonies — which is, for all intents and purposes, a forced labor camp — before then being returned to Gilead proper and suffers many, many more traumatic indignities under "his Eye," as the saying in Gilead goes. "The Handmaid's Tale" is a really uncomfortable show to watch, especially in 2025, but Brewer is absolutely sublime as Janine.

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