‘Handmaid’ reborn as Hulu series
PASADENA, CALIF. The Handmaids return.
Having already been made as a feature film in 1990, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale will now be told again as a Hulu series. Coming April 26, this latest version of Atwood’s 1985 classic novel stars Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss, leading a cast that includes Alexis Bledel, Joseph Fiennes, Samira Wiley and Yvonne Strahovski.
Set in a dystopian future United States that treats women as breeding property of the state,
The Handmaid’s Tale centers on Offred (Moss), one of the few remaining fertile women, who battles to survive and find the daughter that was stolen from her.
Moss says she had read the book, but her memories of it were hazy enough that the scripts, when they came, were able to surprise her. “I was still incredibly taken and interested in the story. … I selfishly said yes, because I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone else doing it,” she told television critics Saturday.
The character is, obviously, a big step away from Peggy in Mad
Men, but that’s not why she wanted to play her. Moss says she doesn’t worry about being “typed” and doesn’t pick roles to break or follow them. “I do whatever is the best writing.”
If Handmaid is a leap for Moss, it’s an even bigger one for Bledel, who is known to most people for her sweet performances in Gilmore Girls and The Sisterhood of
the Traveling Pants. “For me this role is an incredible opportunity to delve a bit deeper. … It’s an incredibly rich role for me to get to play, and I just can’t believe I get to do it.”
And Moss says Bledel, who also worked on Mad Men, is doing it incredibly well. “We were all completely blown away by her work in this.” In essence, says Wiley, Hand
maid is a tale about women fighting for the right to control their own bodies, a fight and a theme that are all the more relevant today. And that, she says, is one good reason to bring the story to life once again. “I feel like it is our responsibility as artists to reflect the time we’re living in.”