diff --git a/Lib/test/test_subprocess.py b/Lib/test/test_subprocess.py
index da92d594688..5cc8903e7c2 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_subprocess.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_subprocess.py
@@ -886,26 +886,26 @@ class POSIXProcessTestCase(BaseTestCase):
     def test_undecodable_env(self):
         for key, value in (('test', 'abc\uDCFF'), ('test\uDCFF', '42')):
             # test str with surrogates
-            script = "import os; print(repr(os.getenv(%s)))" % repr(key)
+            script = "import os; print(ascii(os.getenv(%s)))" % repr(key)
             env = os.environ.copy()
             env[key] = value
             stdout = subprocess.check_output(
                 [sys.executable, "-c", script],
                 env=env)
             stdout = stdout.rstrip(b'\n\r')
-            self.assertEquals(stdout.decode('ascii'), repr(value))
+            self.assertEquals(stdout.decode('ascii'), ascii(value))
 
             # test bytes
             key = key.encode("ascii", "surrogateescape")
             value = value.encode("ascii", "surrogateescape")
-            script = "import os; print(repr(os.getenvb(%s)))" % repr(key)
+            script = "import os; print(ascii(os.getenvb(%s)))" % repr(key)
             env = os.environ.copy()
             env[key] = value
             stdout = subprocess.check_output(
                 [sys.executable, "-c", script],
                 env=env)
             stdout = stdout.rstrip(b'\n\r')
-            self.assertEquals(stdout.decode('ascii'), repr(value))
+            self.assertEquals(stdout.decode('ascii'), ascii(value))
 
     def test_bytes_program(self):
         abs_program = os.fsencode(sys.executable)