‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Season 5: Meet Christine Ko and Her New Character Lily

Christine Ko joined the cast of The Handmaid’s Tale for season 5. Ko is an actor viewers might recognize, especially since she has recently landed roles in some big-name streaming shows. Her The Handmaid’s Tale character Lily is a former Martha and Mayday operative who first appears in episode 3. Here’s what you should know about Ko and her character.

[SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers ahead for The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 Episode 3.] 

Here’s where you’ve seen Christine Ko before

Christine Ko is one of the newest faces to join the cast of The Handmaid’s Tale. The 34-year-old actor has more than a decade of acting experience. Ko has appeared on television shows such as Hawaii Five-0 and the comedy series Dave, as well as the Netflix original film Tigertail, according to IMDb.

However, Ko recently landed rules in two major Hulu series. First, Ko was added to the Emmy-nominated comedy Only Murders in the Building. In season 2, Ko portrays Nina Lin, an ambitious pregnant board member at the Arconia.

Shortly after landing this role, The Handmaid’s Tale cast Ko. “It took a while to get my bearings,” the actor told Bustle of landing roles in OMITB and The Handmaid’s Tale. “It’s absolutely a luxury to be able to be on multiple shows because there was a time when that one line on a show was everything. If you booked that in a year, man, you were so elated.”

Christine Ko plays Lily in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

In The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5, Christine Ko’s character Lily is a former Martha who was recently rescued from Gilead. In fact, she is one of the women that was traded in exchange for Fred Waterford. Lily is also a Mayday leader, and she’s experienced a lot of horrifying trauma and struggle.

“The character description when you first meet Lily is that she’s completely depleted emotionally and physically,” Ko said while speaking with Meta Critic. “She was just traded [and] these were women that were supposed to go to the Colonies, so it was like her only path was death. And there’s a scar that she has that recently happened.”

Ko added, “She feels this immense debt to June. She doesn’t want to continue to live her life in Toronto as a free woman. She wants to help Mayday and pretty much start a revolution. And so, she’s like, “I’m going to do anything possible, even if this means risking my life again, because this woman saved my life.”

Here’s how Christine Ko was cast in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

When Christine Ko auditioned for the role of Lily in The Handmaid’s Tale, she was exhausted from filming an episode of Only Murders in the Building. “The way they described Lily was that she was really physically and emotionally depleted,” Ko told Bustle. “And I was like, ‘I can do that.'”

The outlet writes that Ko donned her boyfriend’s baggy sweater and had a friend help her shoot a no-makeup audition tape. “I just imagined what life would be like if I had to start fresh, be in this new world, and everyone that I knew was suffering,” she told the outlet. Obviously, she landed the role.

Don’t miss new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 Wednesdays on Hulu.