Nick’s Turn in The Handmaid’s Tale Had Max Minghella Questioning Everything

Major spoilers ahead.

After eight years and nearly six seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, you would think viewers would come to expect the unexpected from the dystopian Hulu show—and yet, it was still a shock to the system when fans learned at the end of season 6, episode 6 that series’ favorite Nick (played with deep pathos by Max Minghella) had betrayed the love of his life, June (Elisabeth Moss), and the rebel cause. In episode 6’s final moments, we find out that Nick revealed June and Mayday’s secret plans to his father-in-law, High Commander Wharton (Josh Charles), who then shut down the brothel Jezebel’s in response.

Episode 7, “Shattered,” picks up where the last left off; it’s confirmed that Gilead murdered all the women who were being forced to “work” at Jezebel’s (save Janine, played by Madeline Brewer) and a devastated June asks Nick to drive her back across the border. It feels like the first time we see June reckon with the totality of who Nick is—not just her Gilead lover and the father of her child, who has saved her again and again, but also a commander who has steadily climbed the ranks of a violent, oppressive regime in order to save himself. When June tearfully tells her husband (O-T Fagbenle) that she doesn’t know what to do next, he doesn’t mince words: “Don’t be in love with a fucking Nazi.”

The Handmaid’s Tale showrunners have since explained why Nick’s character had to go in this direction for the final season, noting that there have been important clues all along. But for Minghella, Nick’s turn was still staggering: “Transparently, I was surprised,” he tells ELLE.com. “I’ve always viewed the June and Nick relationship as a kind of reprieve from the darker, more intense elements of the show. So I thought it was a really bold and interesting choice to bring that story into this more nihilistic viewpoint.”

Below, Minghella talks Nick’s season 6 story arc, the “darker side” of his character, and why he thinks he might’ve been playing Nick “incorrectly” all along.

How were you feeling going into this final season? Did you have hopes and dreams for Nick?

No. Look, I’ve always been blissfully comfortable with not being too involved with the creative elements of the show, and that’s really due to my trust in the team and the writers who have, season after season, delivered such rich material for all of us. So I’m always just happy to sit back and see what’s sent my way.

This year was a little bit different because Lizzie [Elisabeth Moss] and I were working on a different project before we shot [Handmaid’s]. So I was a little bit more privy as to what the direction of the storyline would be for Nick this year, whereas usually I’m kind of in the dark.

June (Elisabeth Moss) and Nick (Max Minghella) in season 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale

So you knew the trajectory he would take this season before going into it?

I did, yeah, for a while beforehand.

How did you feel about that when you first heard—or even when you read the scripts for episodes 6 and 7?

Transparently, I was surprised. I’ve always viewed the June and Nick relationship as a kind of reprieve from the darker, more intense elements of the show. So I thought it was a really bold and interesting choice to bring that story into this more nihilistic viewpoint. It wasn’t what I expected, and I recognized that as something valuable. It was unpredictable, and as an actor, it also provided a way to sort of explore a different facet of Nick—and, to be honest, a facet of Nick I didn’t even know existed.

What do you mean by that?

I think I’ve just sort of been naive, I suppose, about who he was as a character. And when I saw what he was going to be doing and how the show was going to sort of shift its perspective on him, it made me realize that maybe [laughs] I hadn’t been playing this character correctly the whole time. I think that there was probably a darker side to him that I didn’t realize was there, so that gave me a new thing to play. It’s a privilege of doing a show for so many years, that you get to explore different sides of the character.

Minghella and Moss behind the scenes

In interviews with the showrunners, there’s this discussion about what Nick does off-screen as a commander, and what he’s done over the years to climb the ranks in Gilead. Did you start to think more about that side of him or try to imagine what he might be doing?

I didn’t think about it in quite those terms. To go back to what I said before, I feel like I was probably just a little bit naive about that time off. I’d always seen Nick, probably incorrectly, as somebody who was quite subservient and maybe not so autonomous in his own journey. And I think there’s an indication, given where things go in season 6, that maybe that’s not the case.

Looking back through the seasons, there’s also a question of whether Nick was solely motivated by wanting to save June, or did he also care about the resistance?

I don’t think that Nick is somebody who is massively intellectual in his approach to anything. He’s quite reactionary, and he’s a survivalist, and that’s been very consistent, even in season 6.

He’s had a quite a tough go at it, like a lot of the characters in the show. And the show is quite operatic in its melodrama, so he’s constantly faced with these rather significant hurdles. I don’t know if he has enough time to think about it in those terms. But June is something that’s always been, I think, primary in his focus.

Moss and Minghella

I was really struck when he tells Rita that he can’t be good without June in his life. What did you take from that?

I thought that felt really consistent with this character from day one. He finds a lot of his self-worth in that relationship, and the validation he just gets on a basic level from June’s attention.

He also tells June that she’s been ignoring the fact that he’s a commander, but then he seems heartbroken that she views him as a “monster.” It made me think: What does Nick believe to be true about himself? But maybe, to your point, he hasn’t even gotten that far.

Yeah, he’s always had extremely low self-esteem. Barring a brief period at the top of season 6, where he’s just feeling himself for a second, he’s got pretty low self-esteem [as a whole]. That’s why, I think, the June relationship was so [precious] to him.

What kind of conversations did you and Elisabeth Moss have about the Nick-June relationship going into these episodes?

Lizzie is so entwined in the leadership of this show on every level and figuring all of this stuff out. I could tell how excited she was about season 6, talking to her about it from a very early stage before [there were] even scripts. Nobody works harder on this show than she does to make it as good as possible. She cares about it so much. It’s given me a lot of peace as an actor, because I’ve never had to second-guess anything. I really can just show up and do my job and focus on my job alone. That’s not always the case [on a project], and I attribute a huge amount of that to her.

The cast on set of The Handmaid’s Tale season 6

A major theme in Handmaid’s is this idea that fascism—or patriarchy or whatever you want to call it—hurts us all, even if you think you’re benefitting from it. Nick’s story in particular really speaks to that, but we also see it all the time in our current climate. Is that something you thought about a lot when considering who Nick is?

In terms of thematic stuff you’re talking about, Margaret Atwood wrote this novel in 1985, and there’s a timelessness to her writing that’s quite insane and such an astonishing thing. And a lot of the time in history, we think that things are happening for the first time that are actually quite cyclical. The fact that this novel was written so long ago, and still remains as relevant as it is, is a testament to that—no pun intended.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu