Award-winning producer talks about the role of timing in success
During a panel discussion called Decoding the DNA of Hit TV at the Banff World Media Festival earlier this week, a question was raised as to whether the global TV phenomenon The Handmaid’s Tale would have had such an impact had it been made five years earlier.
Based on the novel Margaret Atwood wrote in the 1980s and set in an indeterminate future, the Ontario-shot American series stars Elisabeth Moss and offers a chilling look at a society ruled by a Christian fundamentalist regime that forces fertile women into sexual slavery and child-bearing servitude. Now in the midst of its second season, it continues to provide a significant jolt to television audiences. But would audiences have reacted so strongly to such a show in 2005? Or 2010? Or would it have just been viewed as an exquisitely made, niche, dystopian thriller?
“I think it is really the timing,” says Sheila Hockin, co-executive producer of The Handmaid’s Tale, in an interview with Postmedia. “I think it’s the administration in the United States, and #MeToo and #TimesUp and Harvey Weinstein. I think it’s all of that.”
Last year at the Banff World Media Festival, The Handmaid’s Tale was already being propped up as the newest darling in our golden age of TV. It was awarded program of the year, while producer Warren Littlefield and actress Yvonne Strahovski held a master class on the subject. That there would be a Season 2 never seemed to be in question. Distributed by Hulu and broadcast on Bravo in Canada, the show has somehow managed to get even darker this season and, arguably, even more timely. A third season has already been greenlit.
“I think when you have a lot of freedom, as we all do, being reminded what a repressive regime
can do to your life is horrifying but it’s spellbinding,” Hockin says. “I think there’s been enough of a shift in the culture of American politics under Donald Trump. You can see: ‘Oh, he’s going to try and dismantle health care. Oh, he’s going to withhold funding from clinics that offer safe abortions.’ It not just to do with women, it’s that things can change very quickly. Which was always Atwood’s premise. It’s like the frog in a pot of heated water: Things can change and you don’t know it until they have already changed. It’s a lightning rod.”
Hockin was at the Banff World Media Festival earlier this week to accept the Canadian Award of Distinction. Past honourees include Jay Barachul, Eric McCormack, Howie Mandel, Paul Gross, Kim Cattrall and Will Arnett. Hockin is one of the few recipients of the award who works behind the scenes.
Before her current success with The Handmaid’s Tale, Hockin cofounded Toronto’s Temple Street Productions in 1996, a Canadian production company. Among the early shows that Hockin helped create was Queer as Folk, an American-Canadian version of the hit British series.
Hockin sold Temple Street in 2006 and has since put her stamp on ambitious series such as Vikings, The Borgias, The Tudors, Penny Dreadful and Into the Badlands.
“For each series I’ve been involved in for these past couple of decades, there has been some compelling reason,” Hockin says. “With Queer as Folk, I just thought the British show was astonishing and was brave and fearless and I just thought ‘My God, what a blast it would be to see if we could not f—kthatup.’”
“It tends to be the material, the writer,” she says. “But we also all like to keep working. I’d never do a show I hated, but if people say ‘Hey are you interested in this?’ there’s usually something in it that fascinates me.”
I think it’s the AdministrAtion in the United StAtes, And #MeToo And #TimesUp And HArvey Weinstein. I think it’s All of thAt.