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.