Handmaid's Tale's O-T Fagbenle Is Staying Busy

The actor also explains the origin of his Presumed Innocent character's memorable accent.

People who watch The Handmaid’s Tale want to — no, need to — talk about the show, to dissect each episode, to commiserate over its too-close-to-home storytelling. Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, the series is set in Gilead, an authoritarian society in part of the former United States, where women have been stripped of their rights.

And O-T Fagbenle, who plays Luke Bankole, devoted husband of resistance leader June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), gets it. Given the current political climate, he calls The Handmaid’s Tale an important show, noting, “The best that art can do is keep conversations alive and have us thinking about the state of the world.”

But does he ever find talking about the dystopian drama — which began its sixth and final season in April — overwhelming? Are people bending Fagbenle's ear at the grocery store, when he's out to dinner, seeing a play?

"To be fair, it's not overwhelming for me at all. People are always nice and kind and respectful of my time and stuff like that," he says, adding, "The actresses on this show do some of the best work on television, and I wonder what it must be like for them. People do come up to me, but really, this show is about them."

Part of The Handmaid's Tale since its inception, he calls it "a privilege to work with someone like Lizzie," referring to Moss, who is also an executive producer and director on the show. This season, Luke and June continue their quest to rescue their daughter, Hannah, from Gilead.

Beyond The Handmaid’s Tale, the British actor, a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who began his career in theater, has an extensive television résumé. It includes the HBO dramedy Looking; Hulu’s Maxxx, a series he created, wrote and starred in; and Loot on Apple TV+.

Fagbenle as prosecutor Nico Della Guardia in Presumed Innocent / Photo credit: Apple TV+

Most recently, Fagbenle appeared in two star-studded ensembles — on Netflix’s No Good Deed as Dennis, an author in pursuit of his dream house; and on the Apple TV+ legal thriller Presumed Innocent in the role of Nico Della Guardia, a slimy, pompous prosecutor.

Fagbenle created an intentionally grating accent for the verbose Nico. "I was a little nervous when I turned up on set for Presumed Innocent, because no one knew I was going to talk like that," he confesses. "So, I was a little afraid that someone would just say, ‘What are you doing? Stop that!’" But no one did, and Fagbenle earned rave reviews for his character's unusual manner of speaking. "I've been lucky enough to have a number of people say I’ve been quite good at accents. But with no false humility at all, I am not good at accents," he says, chalking up his success to great dialect coaches.

Born in London to a Nigerian political journalist father and a British mother who spent much of her career working in sustainability, the actor moved around a lot growing up. The family went back and forth between London and Nigeria and spent a couple of years in Spain before finally settling in England, where Fagbenle attended high school.

All that globetrotting had an impact on his own accent, which he describes as "a little bit of a mutt of an accent, and it changes if I'm around the Nigerian family, or my London friends, or mom."

Fagbenle says we never hear his natural accent when he acts, "because my natural accent is too weird." This writer really didn't find it weird at all.


This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue # 6, 2025, under the title "Working Overtime."

The Handmaid's Tale is available for streaming on Hulu