Is Commander Fred Waterford maybe not so bad after all? No, no, he is, but the actor that portrays him on The Handmaid’s Tale, Joseph Fiennes, stepped up in a big, gentlemanly way over a controversial scene in season two of the Hulu drama.

During a conversation for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Fiennes revealed he had to “go out on a limb” and refuse to do a scene because he simply could not agree with it.

“I guess in many ways, as abhorrent and nasty and evil as Fred is, I have to defend parts of him. In episode 9, we had a moment where Fred was going to rape — after meeting Luke — rape Serena in a hotel room straight after, and it just didn’t track for me. I had to go out on a limb and refuse to do it because I felt that even though Fred is who he is, he’s human. And I think that he would be reeling from the interaction with Luke, and that suddenly the reality comes face to face with him and he would be digesting that and trying to understand it, and he wouldn’t necessarily be switched on by being in Canada in a new hotel and trying to heavily persuade his wife to do something that she wouldn’t want to do.”

This involved Fiennes sending “long emails and defending and pushing, and feeling that Yvonne had tracked Serena so beautifully that her disenfranchisement with the regime and Fred was so beautifully charted it didn’t need a heavy scene to kind of suddenly push her over the edge.”

And you thought this season of The Handmaid’s Tale couldn’t get any more traumatic!