On Friday evening, eager TV fans packed the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center to watch The first episode of Hulu’s highly anticipated adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, screened for a packed crowd at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday night. Given the reactions, it appears the palpably ominous first episode (debuting April 26 on the streaming service) hit all the right beats: people laughed at the quiet, acidic punchlines just as much as they winced at the tense moments. But when the cast sat down for a panel discussion and were asked whether they consider the series a “feminist” work, and whether they wanted that to be a part of the discussion when they signed on, their answers were much less in tune with the audience than the episode itself had been.

Madeline Brewer, formerly of Orange Is the New Black and now Janine in the world of Gilead, took a stab first: “That’s not the reason I got involved,” she said. “I personally heard about all the other people involved in this show, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I need to be there.’ . . . I think that any story, if it is a story being told by a strong, powerful woman. . . any story that’s just a powerful woman owning herself in any way is automatically deemed ‘feminist.’ But it’s just a story about a woman. I don’t think that this is any sort of feminist propaganda. I think that it’s a story about women and about humans. . . This story affects all people.”

Ann Dowd shrewdly sidestepped the “feminist” question altogether, stressing the story’s political resonance instead. “What I love about this, among other things, is the notion ‘stay awake.’ Stay. awake. And don’t for a minute think [that] if you say, ‘Well, I’ll get involved some other time. I won’t worry about this midterm election . I’ll just—’ No, no, no. Don’t wait. Just stay awake.”

Dowd later got even bolder; when asked what the cast hopes viewers will take away from the series, she said, “I hope it has a massive effect on people. I hope they picket the White House, and I hope they’re wearing these costumes. . . I hope it’s all over the place, and it doesn’t end. And that we never, ever underestimate the power of morons.”

When Elisabeth Moss was asked how many similarities she sees between The Handmaid’s Tale’s Offred and her old Mad Men heroine, Peggy Olson, she veered back to the previous question.

“Well, they’re both human beings. They’re the same height,” she quipped, adding later, “For me, [The Handmaid’s Tale is] not a feminist story. It’s a human story because women’s rights are human rights. So, for me it’s, I never intended to play Peggy as a feminist. I never intended to play Offred as a feminist. They’re women, and they’re humans. Offred’s a wife, a mother, a best friend. You know, she has a job. And she is a person who’s not supposed to be a hero, and she falls into it. And she kind of does what she has to do to survive, to find her daughter. It’s about love, honestly, so much of this story. So for me, you know, I never approach anything with any sort of, like, political agenda. I approach it from a very human place, I hope.”

The irony is that Moss’s declaration that “women’s rights are human rights” has been a feminist talking point for decades. It is most strongly associated with Hillary Clinton, who uttered the words during her 1995 speech to at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. It’s impossible to fully know and understand the casts’ beliefs based on quick answers during a film festival panel. But it is striking and somewhat baffling that the cast behind a series that delivered such a strong—and yes, feminist—message was apparently reluctant to associate with the movement itself.

This position is clearly an established part of the messaging surrounding this series: in a separate interview with Time published April 12, Moss and Atwood shared an exchange espousing a similar viewpoint:

Moss: A question I get asked a lot in inter­views: Do you gravitate toward feminist roles? This is a question I struggle to answer because I don’t necessarily feel like they are feminist roles. I feel like they’re interesting women. The Handmaid’s Tale is considered one of the great feminist novels. I actually consider it a human novel about human rights, not just women’s rights.

Atwood: Well, women’s rights are human rights unless you have decided that women aren’t human. So those are your choices. If women are human, then women’s rights are part of human rights.

Moss: Exactly.

Atwood: When we use that word, feminism, I always want to know: What do you mean by it? What are we talking about? If the person can describe what they mean by the word, then we can talk about whether I am one of those or not.

Moss: I find myself getting slightly tripped up because I am a feminist, and I’m not ashamed of it. But that’s not why I chose this role. I did it because it’s a complex character.

Atwood: If it were only a feminist book, you would think, in that case, all the women are over here on the low side, and all the men are over here on the high side. But it’s more like the way human societies actually arrange themselves, which means some powerful people at the top. The women connected to those people have more power than the men connected to the bottom rank.

The word “feminism” has long been a lightning rod—not just for this project, but in general. Especially in recent years, it seems to have become a P.R. stumbling block for female celebrities: some get accused of trying to take advantage of the movement for their own gain, while others have been reprimanded for failing to understand what feminism actually is. So it’s not entirely surprising that those involved with this project would get somewhat opaque when the subject arises.

Still, after last year’s election, feminists have been energized—and they’ve been eager to embrace this series, which, like the book, seems to align with their anxieties. The f-word will continue to follow The Handmaid’s Tale regardless of what the cast and Atwood say, but rather than belabor the talking points, maybe it’s time focus on the sentiment that permeates the Hulu series, the original book, and those who love them: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.