Madeline Brewer’s Bronte is the latest woman to pique the interest of Penn Badgley’s serial killer Joe Goldberg on Netflix’s You — but outside of the show, the actress is experiencing a different kind of viciousness.
Across the internet, some fans of You have chosen to mock Season 5 character Bronte, the younger woman who becomes Joe’s love interest after he hires her to work at his bookshop. In making fun of the character, however, many are also coming for Brewer’s appearance. The actress, who also stars in The Handmaid’s Tale and previously appeared on Orange Is the New Black, has been likened to Rumpelstiltskin from the Shrek franchise and generally criticized for not measuring up to certain beauty standards.
But while some people are spewing hate toward Brewer’s character, other fans say they’re playing right into the very things that the show is railing against — specifically, misogyny.
What people are saying about the criticism
The criticism of Brewer’s appearance has sparked backlash, with one redditor on the You subreddit calling the hate “appalling.”
“I’m not here to convince anyone to like Brontë in any way or even the last season, but Madeline Brewer is an actress,” they wrote. “She does not deserve to have her looks dragged just because most people didn’t like her character. If you’re resorting to coming for someone’s looks, especially when it isn’t even important or relevant, it’s time to grow up.”
The pushback to Bronte has also made people think about the show’s central themes. Over the course of five seasons, You has depicted Joe as a closet misogynist who puts women on pedestals — only to violently knock them off when they fail to live up to his expectations. Meanwhile, Bronte, and by extension Brewer, is being negatively compared to some of Joe’s other love interests, such as Victoria Pedretti’s Love Quinn or Elizabeth Lail’s Beck.
“Honestly think the hate coming for her is mostly just misogyny,” another redditor wrote. “People don’t like her because they think she’s not pretty enough which is absurd. Or they hate her because they completely missed the point of the show and can’t stand to see Joe lose despite the entire thing leading up to this point.”
A third person reflected on how criticism of Brewer’s character also reflects things that happened on the show — like how the internet turns against Bronte in a pivotal episode. “It’s wild people watched the episode where a bunch of toxic men said unwarranted crazy shit to Brontë and then went and did the same thing in real life,” they mused.
Over on TikTok, many fans of the show are disappointed by how many viewers seemed to miss the point of You — with one person expressing frustration that people are mad at the finale because they found Bronte “annoying and unattractive” and were upset she “didn’t die.”
What has Madeline Brewer said?
Brewer anticipated some backlash to her You character. In an earlier interview with Vanity Fair, the actress told the magazine, “People aren’t going to like Bronte for one reason or another. They’ll love to hate her — or hate to love her. So that part I’m just gently preparing myself for. If that means I’m not on Instagram for a while, that’s fine.”
Brewer has since seen negative comments about her looks online — and she knows she’s not the only actress to be targeted by hate.
In an interview with L’Officiel, Brewer said she’s aware that “people really don’t like Bronte” — which is “fine” with her, because she does.
“It’s so funny, because people are truly unable to separate the actor from the character,” she continued. “I know Kaitlyn Dever is getting a lot of this right now, too [for her role as Abby on The Last of Us], and it’s like, why are we so incapable of doing that? Also, if you don’t like my character, I don’t care — but you don’t need to call me ugly.”
