Six seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale was coming to an end when The Hollywood Reporter visited the Hulu series’ Toronto film set late last year. As cameras rolled on the cavernous soundstages on the city’s westside, there was an air of a college graduation, as key cast and creatives were readying to say goodbye to the popular dystopian saga with hugs, tears and expressions of achievement and transition.
Production was underway on one of the final episodes in the sixth season — “Shattered,” which releases May 6. The Emmy-winning series climaxes May 27 with its series finale. For Canadian star Amanda Brugel, who has played former Martha, Rita, as a series regular since the drama launched in 2017, the shock of knowing the dystopian drama is really ending only hit when the script for the final episode reached her hands.
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“I had a full-fledged breakdown. I texted Elizabeth [Moss] immediately. I was in tears and cast members were texting one another. It suddenly hit me, realizing this was the last time I was going to read a script for this series,” Brugel recalled during a roundtable with international media, including The Hollywood Reporter, of the news that the series was coming to an end.
Yvonne Strahovski, in her final round of playing Serena Joy Waterford with her complicated and often desperate relationship with Handmaid’s Tale protagonist June (Elisabeth Moss), spoke about getting to know and growing into a character she now has to let go of. “You invest this many years and this much into a character that you really do know like the back of your hand, and it’s just so fun when they call action and you’re off to the races,” she reflected.
Recalling the cliffhanger of the fifth season finale and where the final season picked up — with Serena staring at June on a train to the unknown with other Gilead refugees and their babies — she said of the central relationship between the two women: “The onion layers keep coming off and they just can bullshit each other a little less each time. This is probably the most real and honest version of their relationship that we’re going to see [between them].”
After Serena survived a jump off with the train earlier in the season, she found herself, in a roundabout way, back in Gilead and helping to steer the new vision proposed by Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford): New Bethlehem, which he pitches as a safer haven for Gilead refugees to return to and reconnect with loved ones.
Costume designer Leslie Kavanagh recalled assembling new fabrics, colors and fashion designs for Strahovski as she moved to New Bethlehem, independent of Gilead, in the final season. “I didn’t want Serena in blues and teals, because she’s no longer a wife. She is a widow,” Kavanagh explained.
Serena also lost a lot of her earlier faith in Gilead. In New Bethlehem, she sees not only a chance to right past wrongs, but also the opportunity to forge a better marital union with new Gilead High Commander Wharton (Josh Charles), whose marriage proposal she accepted in the sixth episode, “Surpruse.”
“I did a lot of power suits, and we really changed the silhouettes for her in New Bethlehem,” Kavanagh told THR. “She’s allowed to wear pants, which had never been done before. She’s wearing a lot of asymmetrical and really interesting lines, very clean lines. They’re very different cuts than I’ve done for other wives and what you’ve seen in previous seasons.”
There’s also a big character evolution in the works for Ann Dowd, whose Aunt Lydia will be the connective character after Handmaid’s Tale ends and sequel series The Testaments begins. The Hulu and MGM follow-up is currently in production in Toronto with much of the Handmaid’s Tale team reassembled behind the scenes. For Dowd, that hasn’t made saying farewell to the Handmaid’s Tale any easier.
“It’s hard to say goodbye, and I imagine it will be for all cast members as we’ve been together for so long. Oh, my word, my little Janine, my girl,” Dowd tells THR of Janine Lindo, the handmaid-turned-Jezebel character played by Madeline Brewer for six seasons, who, as of now, is not following onto The Testaments.
“I’m sure I could get on her nerves in two seconds flat, because I like to hold onto her in life. She’s wonderful. Love her. Love her,” Dowd said of her relationship with Brewer both on screen and off.
The Good Place star D’Arcy Carden, who joined The Handmaid’s Tale final season as an Aunt in a guest starring role, recalled coming onto a close-knit cast and set as entirely daunting at first. A starstruck Carden admitted to fluffing her lines during one scene opposite Whitford and his benevolent High Commander Joseph Lawrence.
“Instead of being in character and having my next line ready, I had the thought of, ‘That’s Bradley Whitford. I love him.’ I called Aunt Lydia, ‘Aunt Phoebe,’ and we had to start again,” a sheepish yet smiling Carden told THR
For production designer Elisabeth Williams, who has brought her art design eye to the Hulu drama for five seasons, the comforts of being back in Montreal led her to pass on moving on to work on The Testaments production, even as most of her crew will join the sequel drama in Toronto. “I’m super happy for them, of course, and super happy for myself as well, to move on. That was my choice,” she explained.
Reflecting on how Gilead and its unique universe has changed in look and tone over the epic character journey for star-director-executive producer Moss as she has gone from handmaid Offred to Gilead survivor and rebellion leader June Osbourne, Williams told THR of expanding the show’s world, “Gilead had a much more stark, cold, minimalist environment, especially in the grand, great places. There’s was something very austere. But as we moved into Canada, Toronto, I wanted to explore a world that was a lot more chaotic, a lot more natural, a lot more disorganized, and messy, where colors and styles blend and it’s just normal life.”
A common theme expressed by creatives and cast members leaving The Handmaid’s Tale behind was how a confluence of real-world events and fictional choices allowed the Hulu drama to have a chilling relevance for loyal fans. Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang were tasked with sticking the landing when they took over as co-showrunners once creator Bruce Miller began development on The Testaments. The writers never set out to keep up with a world overshadowed by Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
“We feel the timing is something fortunate for the show and maybe not so fortunate for the real world,” Tuchman told THR. Strahovski added what many in The Handmaid’s Tale cast echoed: Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, on whose dystopian allegorical novel the series is based, has been eerily prescient about the politics around the first and second Trump presidencies as the U.S., according to many critics, veers towards a nation more resembling of Gilead now than when the show began in 2017. Atwood’s sequel novel Testaments is also the basis for the sequel series.
“It’s been interesting and very strange to be on a show like this. We’re simultaneously telling a story about this very topic, while the reality in the world is happening parallel to us, and at times eerily so, because it does seem like we have had a crystal ball to predict some the stuff, which obviously we haven’t,” Strahovski said.
That’s especially true for a leading cast who has been with The Handmaid’s Tale since its inception as a TV drama, before the politicization of women’s health and the emergence of the #MeToo movement in the U.S. “In 2016, when we began, he [Trump] became president. It’s unbelievable that we have made the same mistake as we end our season. It’s quite remarkable,” said Dowd to THR.
She pointed to the irony of the connection between The Handmaid’s Tale and its dramatic depictions of crimes and inequality waged against women with the resonance she hopes the series will ultimately have on the audience, “One always hopes, and I didn’t realize the extent to which it would be relevant and powerful,” she said.
The Handmaid’s Tale releases new season six episodes on Tuesdays. Follow along with THR’s final season coverage.
