Moss finds a love of producing

NEW YORK “The timing has been uncanny,” says Margaret Atwood, marvelling at how her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has not only been given renewed life as a TV series but has also gained disturbing urgency.

The cast includes Joseph Fiennes, Alexis Bledel and Samira Wiley, and stars Elisabeth Moss as Offred, who, as one of the few remaining fertile women in the cruel dystopia of Gilead, is among the caste of women forced into sexual servitude in a desperate attempt to repopulate a ravaged world.

Needless to say, Offred is a career stretch for Moss, who remains best known as proto-feminist copywriter Peggy Olson on the advertising drama Mad Men, and who initially caught the audience’s eye as U.S president’s daughter Zoey Bartlet on The West Wing.

Now 34, Moss further expanded her horizons during the Handmaid’s Tale shoot in Toronto: She added the title of producer.

“I had no interest in it just being a title card,” she says, “and I was extremely lucky. They listened to me and asked my advice on things in a way that I didn’t expect. It’s been an amazing opportunity for me to learn. And now I’m totally obsessed with it. I’ve got two different projects that I’m considering buying. I’ve got lists on my phone for actors I might like to cast.”

The tone of The Handmaid’s Tale is subdued, reflecting the oppressive conditions the women live under. And it posed an acting challenge for Moss, one that Atwood, 77, as the novelist who created her character, calls “pretty difficult.”

Moss’s problem, says Atwood, “is to show someone who is unable to speak out, because it’s too dangerous, but who has to convey to the audience those emotions she is suppressing. We must be able to be inside her mind, while also being in the larger situation.”