Maid is not a series for those faint of heart.
Not only does the Netflix drama depict one single mother’s resilience as she attempts to rebuild her life after leaving an abusive relationship, it also features brutal cleaning scenes that would make any clean freak’s skin crawl. One memorable scene featured Margaret Qualley‘s character Alex having to clean a squatters’ den, which included overflowing toilets, crusty countertops and more unthinkable mess.
Before you panic and break out your hand sanitizer, take comfort in this behind-the-scenes intel regarding those horrifyingly dirty rooms: They aren’t real. No, really. Qualley told E! News in an exclusive chat that a brilliant creative team transformed those spaces to just look disastrous.
“It’s incredible,” she started off. “The concoctions that they would use to make, because, like, it’s all fake. I’m doing the princess version of all this. It’s like ketchup and hot sauce and A-1 or whatever that’s like, plastered onto an oven in order to make it look like [dirt]. Everything is like clean dirt.”