This Woman’s Work
June is fighting back from the inside in season four of The Handmaid’s Tale – Gilead beware…
A HELL OF A LOT HAS A happened in the world since the end of season three of The Handmaid’s Tale left us with the image of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) bleeding out from a bullet wound in the wake of transporting almost 100 innocent children out of Gilead to safety in Canada.
In the 20 months since that season finale, the global pandemic hit, multiple lockdowns have ensued, and the American election has dumped Trump out of office. With all of that real-world chaos still percolating, the return of the show for its fourth season feels almost quaint.
Executive producers Bruce Miller and Warren Littlefield are just excited to be back telling June’s story after their own extended hiatus due to Covid-19induced production delays, and they hope this season will prove to be a cathartic escape for audiences feeling increasingly frustrated with the world around them right now.
“After all this time, we are so glad to be back,” Miller tells Red Alert enthusiastically. “And in this season, we weren’t waiting around. It was time for shit to happen, and we tried to make shit happen.”
In particular, Miller says June will be making plenty of noise in her active rebellion against the Commanders and totalitarian patriarchy of Gilead. Having hit them where it hurts – by taking away so many of their precious children – she now is on the run and ready to summon more pain for the leaders with organised uprisings. “This year, in some ways, it’s about patience rewarded,” Littlefield says of the insurgency June is fomenting. “We’ve planted seeds for several years about this uprising and hot spot in Chicago that the forces of Gilead really can’t keep under control, and that’s where the uprising is.” Adding to that drama is that June’s lover, Commander Nick Blaine (Max Minghella), is being sent there too, which means a reunion is all but assured.
That expansion into new locales means the show is also opening up from just the greater Boston area and infrequent peeks at free Canada. “In season four, we have no home base,” Littlefield continues. “Seasons one and two were the Waterford house. Well, we burnt it down. We are nomadic now. We are following June’s passion, her drive, her relentless pursuit for change, and that takes us everywhere. We are out on the road. Go figure – in this year of Covid, we attempted our most ambitious production year because we are out there following this journey.”
Behind the scenes, Miller says the pandemic became a huge influence on the final form of this season because of the shut-down and the new limits they had to deal with that impacted the overall narrative. “We were constantly, the entire season, making adjustments to the script and the story,” Miller shares. “But, honestly, the biggest change is it was difficult to get our cast into Canada to shoot. We had to keep people out of episodes simply because they didn’t have enough
time in their schedule. I mean, people are very kind to come up and fly for a day’s worth of work in Canada from anywhere, especially when so many of our cast members, like Clea Duvall, work very hard on other shows.”
Interestingly, the US political landscape changing from the right-wing Trump administration to the liberal Biden administration has not meant any kind of emergency narrative shifts in the writers’ room. Littlefield explains it this way: “The Democrats take back the White House. They hold the House and they gain control of the Senate. Champagne! A calm that comes over us, a sanity that we haven’t had for four years…?
“Not even close,” he laughs. “The sea is as choppy as it’s ever been, and I think that that’s true for the journey and the story we’re telling [this season]. Not intentionally, but we do seem to mirror the very issues of life and
We follow June’s passion, her drive, her relentless pursuit for change
safety and human rights that we’re wrestling with every day in the streets of this country. We’re playing them out in our show. And I don’t see that changing. We remain as relevant as ever.”
And Miller has special praise for his star’s ability to bring those issues to life in a way that feels very personal.
“One of the things Lizzie does so beautifully is that she makes it a story about a woman, not a story about a political time. We are all people living through a political time, and a lot of our media is about big things that we really can’t relate to. But when the politics start reaching into your bedroom or get between you and your child, that’s the difference between a government and a totalitarian government.” TB
The Handmaid’s Tale season four streams on Hulu in the US from 28 April. UK details are still TBC.