‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Star O-T Fagbenle Is a Father on a Mission in Final Season: “He’s Ready to Die”

[This story contains spoilers from the fourth episode of season six of The Handmaid’s Tale, “Promotion.”]

The marriage at the center of The Handmaid’s Tale came to a crossroads in the fourth episode of the final season, when June (Elisabeth Moss) and husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) argued about which of them would go back into Gilead to help carry out an undercover mission for the resistance group called Mayday.

While June was in Alaska, where she reunited with her mother, Holly (played by returning star Cherry Jones), Luke was on a mission. After two seasons of taking a backseat to June and her trauma after her escape from Gilead, the sixth and final season of Hulu‘s dystopian saga sees Luke joining the fight. In perhaps the most confronting scene he’s had with his wife, after she tries to stop him from carrying out his dangerous mission, June tells Luke, “Be mad, but you’ll be alive.” After he tells her she is so “god damn infantilizing,” he ends the conversation by putting his foot down: “This is my chance to fight for Hannah.”

Hannah is the daughter who was taken from them in the series’ first episode. For five seasons, June has tried, and has come thisclose, to get Hannah out of Gilead, where she’s now a preteen wife-in-training renamed Agnes. The Handmaid’s Tale is ultimately the story of a mother’s plight to get her child back, but this final season is about her father joining in on that fight. Ultimately, Luke tells June, “If you want to fight, let’s fight together.” She agrees: “It feels like when we lost her, that it broke us, and it broke me.”

Below, in a chat about the final season with The Hollywood Reporter, Fagbenle explains why Luke is ready to “go out dying trying to save his child,” shares his reaction to reading the series finale and gets candid about the love triangle between June, Luke and Nick (Max Minghella), the Gilead High Commander and father of June’s other daughter, Holly: “What a tangled web we weave,” he says.

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From our past conversations and from social media, I know you and Elisabeth Moss are very close. What was it like when you returned to set for the first day of the last season?

The main thing that happened the first day is that I got to meet Lizzie [Moss] as a mother. This show is so much about people and their children, and being split from them, and about motherhood and what it is to give birth. And Lizzie went through that. I was just so happy for her. So on day one, for me, the big thing I remember was just meeting my dear friend, my colleague and knowing she’d been through this extraordinary experience.

In the three-episode premiere, Luke and June were reunited in a complex way. She turns to Nick (Max Minghella) to save Luke and Moira (Samira Wiley). It’s all very tangled. How would you say Luke begins to reconcile this role that Nick has in June’s life, which seems to never be going away?

Well, look, talking about children, one of the ways that someone never goes away is that you have a child with them! That means you’re connected to them for the rest of your life in some way or another. So Luke definitely has to reconcile himself with that. He also understands that there is another type of bond between June and Nick; it’s sexual, it’s romantic. There’s a love bond between them, and as far as Luke is concerned, it’s pathological on many levels.

I think she’s overlooking the broader context of his involvement in a fascistic regime, which is a hard thing to miss, I think! But nonetheless, Luke has to come to terms with it and try and do his best and love her for who she is. What a tangled web we weave. That’s one of the brilliant things about the show: things are complicated and the characters have to deal with complicated things.

Luke and Moira confront June about going undercover into Gilead for this Mayday plan. They want to get in on the fight, but June pushes back. Luke says, “I’m doing this for Hannah.” We see cracks between Luke and June when it comes to how marriages can survive the loss of a child. How would you describe Luke’s resolve to get Hannah back, what has changed in him this season?

One of the things this show makes me think about a lot is the plight of refugees in the world right now. If we were to go and look at the refugees who have been moved from their home because of war or destruction and we said, “Why don’t you just go back into that war-torn area and go and make a change?” We’d be like, “That’s ridiculous.” That’s not a feasible thing to do. So I have a lot of sympathy for Luke and the victims who become refugees to go, “Look, it’s maybe an unreasonable ask, and you just deal with what’s in front of you, and you try and get through the next day.” For Luke, taking care and trying to be there for June was a big part of trying to get through the next day.

Between seasons five and six, Luke has been to jail and he realizes that the one port of safety he thought he did have, which was in Canada, is no longer there. So if there’s no safety anywhere, then he might as well go on a mission that very well will lead to his death, and at least go out dying trying to save his child.

June, given everything she’s been through, is more realistic because she knows how hard it is to get Hannah out. The last time you and I spoke, you talked about how Luke is an optimist. Do you think he’s considered the fact that they maybe can’t get his daughter out? And if they can’t, what happens to him and June?

I rarely like to talk about my processes as an actor, but what you just said made me think of it. A lot of how I internally process this part of the journey for Luke is that he’s ready to die. And so the idea that it may not work, the idea that they may go in and die, well, maybe it’s a sweet relief. I think that kind of changes the math. It cannot be more dangerous than being dead, and so I’m willing to face anything.

It feels like Luke’s been fighting to get to these frontlines the whole series. Does it feel like you finally have skin in the game?

Oh, yeah. It matches with that sense of, “If I die, I die.” What’s interesting, and I guess I didn’t even expect this as a character, is that he goes into Gilead thinking, “Okay, well, if the worst happens, the worst happens.” But then you get close, you start thinking, “Holy shit. Now, I can’t die because I’m almost there. I can touch it!” That journey is really exciting for Luke.

What was the most emotional scene for you to film this season?

The first time you see Luke when he’s first come out of jail, I think he’s been through some trauma — going to jail is a pretty traumatic thing to happen to somebody. That scene was pretty rough and pretty intense filming. Part of my job as an actor is to join the dots where we don’t get to see the things that happen. My imagination can go there.

Luke and June have been on such an emotionally epic journey. As a viewer, I can’t really handle the idea that they won’t get Hannah back in the end. Going into the season, did you have expectations about how you hoped this series would end, and were your expectations met when you found out?

I’m a writer myself, and I thought, “How do you end this show? How do you do justice to this incredible journey, to this original source material, to everything that’s going on the world? Good luck, guys!” And they did it. They did it. I haven’t watched it, but I’ve read it. There are so many series where people are like, “Oh man, they did us wrong in the last season.” I don’t think this is going to be one of them. I think people are going to be really satisfied by what happens at the end.

Are there certain emotions you could describe of how you felt reading the ending?

This show is so woven into my life. These are people I love, these are people I’ve worked with, we’ve created this show together. So it’s hard to really quantify and put words to those emotions, but I was immensely proud of the writers for managing to navigate it; of Lizzie, who championed for various things to happen at the end; and I’m really excited to see how they do it.

With The Handmaid’s Tale, we are always talking about a mother’s journey to be reunited with her daughter. What has touched you most about exploring a father’s journey to be reunited with his daughter?

Oh, man, I can get really emotional. During a recent panel, they were playing these clips of Luke being torn away from his daughter, and it was everything I could do to not just start crying on stage. It’s so emotional. You just think about some areas in the world right now where that’s happening; parents are being killed and children are being taken away. It’s a reminder that we’re watching this on our TV screens, but this is the reality for a lot of people and, what can we do to save even one child? To reunite even one mother and their kid?

When you finished your final scene, how did you feel when they called “cut” and your Handmaid’s Tale job was over?

Relieved! Not in a bad way. I really try hard to do my best, to honor the script and to honor my profession. You carry that all the time: “I’ve got to do well and I’ve got to keep my accent.” It really matters to me that this show is great and that my contribution is up to the task. So when you get to the end, I’m like, “[sigh of relief] I did it. I didn’t fail myself.” For however good or bad I did in it, I turned up as hard as I could, and so there is some level of relief in that pride, but also gratitude for the people I was surrounded with.

The handmaid cloaks became a sign of resistance when the show first premiered and they remain one today. I can’t imagine how many times you’ve heard someone say, “We’re living in an episode of The Handmaid Tale.” Do you feel a sense of déjà vu releasing this final season under Trump 2.0 with the Gilead parallels?

I know exactly what you mean by dejà vu. I think we live in a different time now. There are more perilous things around now than even 10 years ago when we started this. I hope that this show, among other things, can help galvanize people into some form of thinking, “Hey, let’s make the world better. Let’s do better for our kids.” There are many ways big and small that we can all contribute to that. I hope that this show makes a mark to push people forward a little bit.

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The Handmaid’s Tale is now streaming the first four episodes of season six, with new episodes releasing Tuesdays on Hulu. Follow along with THR’s season six interviews.