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“I grew up with Margaret Atwood, and I started reading her when I was 14 and fell in love with ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’” Brugel told reporters on the pc28¹ÙÍøset of the show in mid-December.

Not only did Brugel write a series of short stories about the book to help her get into York University in 1996, she penned an essay about Rita for the school’s writing program — although she turned down the scholarship offer it brought to study acting at York instead.

In the religious republic of Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Rita is a “Martha,” a class of childless women who perform domestic duties in the homes of the republic’s commanders.

Back in ’96, Brugel was intrigued by Rita’s “cold and bitter and prickly” nature in the novel.

“I was so curious to know why. My philosophy — and this was what the essay was about — has always been that Marthas have it the best. Marthas are safe; they have a job; they have a purpose; they’re not being bred. And so for a woman to be this angry, with (this) position in Gilead that was quite secure … I was always curious as to what her deal was,” Brugel said. 

Since she began playing Rita in the TV show, which premiered in 2017 and ends this year with its sixth season, Brugel has only fallen more in love with the character. But she also admitted to some frustration with Rita in the early seasons.

“While I admire her — her stoic, quiet, elegant restraint — it’s so different than who I am as a person. In a fight or flight situation, I will fight first and ask questions later. And Rita is not the same. So I’ve battled with her decision-making,” Brugel said.

This season, however, “the woman that I always secretly wanted her to be has finally blossomed. And I couldn’t be more in love with her than I am now.”

With spoilers strictly forbidden, we can’t tell you exactly how Rita has changed. Suffice to say that Brugel feels Rita has finally become “the star of her own life.”

On the day of the interview, Brugel hadn’t yet come to terms with leaving Rita behind as the show ended, after playing her for almost a decade. 

“I’ve been a bit lulled into this place of security with this character. My children were babies (when the show began) and now they’re almost in high school, so it felt like she was never going to leave me. It wasn’t until we received the series finale scripts that I had a full-fledged breakdown. I texted Elisabeth (Moss) immediately and I was in tears … realizing that this was the last time I was going to read a script for this series.

“I can imagine on the last day (of shooting) we’ll all fall apart.”

Playing Rita has brought Brugel — the only Canadian in the series’ lead cast — a renown that many actors here never achieve.

“I’m a star in Canada now and that sounds quite arrogant, but it’s completely changed my career. It’s changed my value as an artist here because I’m associated with the show. It’s changed the opportunities that I’ve been given to work here and internationally,” she said.

And there has been another benefit she calls the “honour of my life”: getting to know the pc28¹ÙÍøauthor she so admired as a teenager.

Not only has Brugel gotten to talk about the series with Atwood and sit with her at awards shows, she is one of the people whom Atwood thanked in the acknowledgments of her “Handmaid’s Tale” sequel, “The Testaments” (which is also being made into a TV show).

“I tore the page out of ‘The Testaments’ and I have it framed, because she is spectacular,” Brugel said of the author. “I grew up in a small town in southern Ontario and I was the only person of colour in my school … and I always felt like an outlier, but I always felt like I had this internal strength. And all of the females in her books resonated with me so much … I had never met women like Margaret writes women and I wanted to be them.

“And so to be one of Margaret’s women now is a dream come true.”