Elisabeth Moss may have won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her lead role as June in The Handmaid’s Tale – but now she has revealed she was very close to turning down the part.

Moss initially planned to refuse the role of June in the hit adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic because she was hesitant to sign up for another TV show so soon after appearing in Mad Men.

“The problem was that I didn’t want to sign on necessarily to do another TV show so quickly, as it had only been a couple of years since I worked on Mad Men,” Moss told Heat magazine. 

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Moss went on to explain that she decided to take the role in the end because she couldn’t bear the thought of another actor playing June.

“But I was thinking about whether to do the show one evening,” she continued, “and I remember having an almost nightmarish experience of waking up in the middle of the night imagining not taking it and someone else doing it. 

“I pictured that in my mind and then I thought to myself, ‘No, no, no, no, no, someone else is not getting their hands on this.’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ That’s why I did it – pure jealousy and competitiveness.”

Moss added that the role of June is the “most connected” she’s felt to a part out of all of her work.

The Handmaid’s Tale airs on Sundays at 9pm on Channel 4.