'Handmaid's Tale' Star Yvonne Strahovski on Season 5's Intense Labor Scene: 'It Felt Very Personal' Because 'I Had Just Given Birth'

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the upcoming season of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale.

Yvonne Strahovski has given birth twice in the past 10 months: once on TV and once in real life.

The 40-year-old actress stopped by the the PEOPLE Every Day podcast Tuesday to talk with host Janine Rubenstein about the fifth season of her drama series, The Handmaid's Tale, and some of the parallels between her on-screen delivery and what she experienced in real life.

"I read that episode and I was like, Oh, yes, this is going to be so amazing and fun to do," Strahovski says. "It felt very personal to me because I had just given birth to my second son. I was literally postpartum, just a few months."

The actress told Rubenstein that the whole experience reminded her of her son's recent home birth. "I spoke to Lizzie [Elisabeth Moss, who plays June] a lot about trying to create a more authentic TV birth," she explained. "That was really important to me."

The birth scene (in fact, the entire seventh episode of The Handmaid's Tale) was full of surprises and an interesting twist: Serena, for whom June was formerly forced to be a Handmaid, gives birth and asks June to take her baby. Strahovski said the scene gave the two actresses so much to "sink our teeth into" with the emotional dialogue.

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"Even the biggest [twist] felt like when Serena suggests, 'Maybe you should take him,' there's just so many sorts of realizations in this," she explained. "There's so many complicated emotional landings for Serena. It is just so magnificent to be five seasons into a show with a character and you're not bored yet. That's amazing."

When Rubenstein asked if her character Serena might be misunderstood, Strahovski laughed and replied, "No."

Even as she admitted it's been fun playing such a complicated character, the actress also acknowledged, "It can be pretty conflicting at times to play someone like Serena Joy."

She continued, "I've kind of always toed that line of, 'Oh, this is really fun.' But it also feels very dirty, kind of justifying a lot of the things that she does — cause my job is to humanize her and all her actions, which are horrible."

After the most recent episodes, there's been a lot of speculation about the storyline and what will happen in the upcoming sixth and final season — specifically, will Serena and her nemesis June (Elisabeth Moss) unite or will they fight to the bitter end?

"I don't know," Strahovski said. "I've seen some of the commentary and it's funny how people are like, 'Oh my gosh, maybe this is the moment where they team up and they take down Gilead and whatever.'"

The two-time Emmy nominee continued, "But it's just so idealistic that there's just no way the writers and Bruce Miller, our showrunner, would do that."

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Strahovski did note that the tension between Serena and June is important: "I think the beauty of the June/Serena [conflict is], that's where the action is at — when they collide. I would love to see that continue."

And it seems like viewers can expect plenty more of that conflict.

"I just don't think there was a happy ending," she teased. "That's why I love and respect the writers so much. Look at this season: the most obvious thing would've been let's make Serena a handmaid. And that would be just, so cool to have that kind of revenge. But, that would be too obvious."

She added, "I just would love to see that kind of unique storytelling continue 'cause it's just magnificent."

The Handmaid's Tale premieres new episodes Wednesdays on Hulu, and PEOPLE Every Day can be streamed daily on multiple platforms including iHeartMedia, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music.