By Jeff Pfeiffer
“It was perhaps more emotional than I would have anticipated,” Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake) shares on her mesmerizing (and frightening) new Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, premiering April 26. “Or a little too close to home.”
Moss plays Offred, the Handmaid of the title from whose point of view the story is told, in a tale encompassing always-relevant themes of men’s attempts to control women’s bodies and reproduction, along with themes of environmental devastation and population issues. She is joined in the inspired cast by Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Samira Wiley and Alexis Bledel, among others, in this 10-episode adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, which is set in a not-far-off future society called Gilead — a militaristic theocracy that has replaced the United States, and where women are viewed as property of the state.
While Atwood, a Canadian author, has said she wasn’t necessarily inspired by a specific modern American government when she wrote the book, and borrowed a lot from America’s Puritan beginnings, readers over the decades have often found parallels to the times in which they are living, much as they have with similar fiction like 1984 and Brave New World. And today’s era is no exception. Moss said working on the show during the recent presidential election gave it new relevance for her.
“I worked the day after the election,” she said, “and we did a couple of scenes, and actually Joseph had the line that’s from the book, where he says, ‘”Better” never means better for everyone; it always means worse for some.’ I get chills just talking about it. It was very difficult to stand there and hear him say that to me, and play my reaction to that — which obviously was horror — and not feel something more than I think I would have felt otherwise.”
The actress also expressed a particular closeness to this role out of all the other notable characters she’s played.
“I would never be a copywriter in the ’60s,” Moss explained. “I would never be a detective. [But] if Gilead happened now, I would be a Handmaid. And that to me is something that I latched onto at the very beginning and found it very affecting. I do feel closer to this role than anything I’ve ever played.”
Brought to you by the publishers of TV Guide, the ultimate TV resource packed with celebrity news and commentary on what’s new and what’s good to watch. Get TV Guide at 88% off the cover price: call 800-866-1400 or visit tvguidemagazine.com. ©TV Guide 2017
