Cast Secrets, Trump and Ending

The Handmaid’s Tale is ending. But to borrow a quote from Margaret Atwood, the end is not the end. And the Hulu series wasn’t the beginning of The Handmaid’s Tale, either.

Back in 1985, Atwood published her best-selling novel of the same name, a near-future dystopian tale about a totalitarian regime, the Republic of Gilead, overthrowing the U.S. government and stripping women of their rights amid a global fertility crisis. The story was told from the point of view of a woman who is renamed Offred after she’s captured, separated from her daughter and forced to be a “handmaid” in Gilead (fertile surrogates for the elite ruling class).

Over the years, Offred’s harrowing and heroic story burrowed itself into the imaginations of readers. Among them was Bruce Miller, who was tapped to adapt the book into the terrifyingly timely Emmy-winning series — after a years-long development process that included lost TV rights, wild pitches about topless handmaids going to war, and a different showrunner and network before landing at Hulu.

Heading into its series finale, more than 20 key stakeholders behind Handmaid’s Tale‘s blazing success — from Atwood and Miller to producers, executives and the cast led by Elisabeth Moss (June/Offred) — share with The Hollywood Reporter how the Trump-era drama captured the cultural zeitgeist, put Hulu on the map and launched a Gilead universe with sequel series The Testaments.

“THIS IS HUNGER GAMES FOR ADULT WOMEN”

Five years after publication, Atwood’s novel was adapted into the 1990 film starring Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. The film was not well received. Two decades passed before the novelist would go into business with MGM and upstart Hulu to make the series.

MARGARET ATWOOD (CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, AUTHOR OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE) After the book published, we had several film offers. Some of them wanted to make Maidens in Leather and go the sadomasochistic route, and we were not interested. Then Daniel Wilson comes along, a New York producer. His wife told him that he had to make this film.

DANIEL WILSON (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) Margaret had a very positive reaction to my suggestion that Harold Pinter would be the ideal screenwriter. She asked if I knew him. My response was, “No, but I will get to know him and make an offer,” which I did.

ATWOOD They got a very good cast [for the movie]. But they flinched at the full costume. The skirts are a mid-calf length and they balked at the big white hat so the handmaids look like red Mennonites with head scarves — probably a mistake. But we were in a period where no one could believe that the United States would ever, ever do such a thing [like the events in The Handmaid’s Tale], even though it had in the past. I don’t think they bought fully into it.

WILSON Yes, the film could have been better, but also it really was ahead of its time.

STEVE STARK (FORMER MGM/UA TV PRESIDENT, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) I started at MGM in November 2011. I had a meeting with Ilene Chaiken, and she said, “I want to do The Handmaid’s Tale series.” I said, “I don’t think we can because it’s just too dark,” and admitted to her that I didn’t read the book; I watched the movie (laughs). The movie was more of a sexual thriller. It didn’t delve into the psychology or politics that Margaret’s book did. Reading it gave me clarity that the reason to do the series is a chance to show the progression of a revolution. Then it was a mess of trying to figure out who owns all of this.

ATWOOD The TV rights were with the movie rights. After the movie got made, the distributor went bankrupt and sold off the assets. For years, we got offers, and I kept saying, “Find the [TV] contract because I don’t know who bought it.” Then along comes streaming, which rearranges everything for novels because now you could make something the length it’s supposed to be, and at that very moment, somebody discovered the contract in one of the drawers at MGM.

LINDSAY SLOANE (HEAD OF MGM US SCRIPTED TELEVISION, AMAZON MGM STUDIOS) After the movie, Danny got hate mail. People threatened, “You ruined my favorite book!” So when Steve called, Danny was like, “I’m not touching that thing again.”

STARK There were all of these companies bought and acquired by MGM. I was told that Danny had the rights. I called him, a blind call, and he didn’t trust me for a long time. We didn’t have deals closed until the end of 2012, so it was a whole year of trying to get it to work out. Then 2013 was the beginning of the selling and writing of it all. We pitched Showtime. WeTV and AMC. Showtime had a deal with Ilene, so we sold it to them pretty quickly. Drafts started coming in and I was like, “I better tell Margaret we’re doing this.”

ATWOOD It was right at the moment when people were starting to worry that rights for women were going backwards. I recall that there had been an early pilot that had women going into battle with their tops off. (Laughs) “It’s television,” they said. I said that would never happen and you would lose the belief of your audience if you did that.

STARK I said, “I don’t want to do anything that you don’t approve of; this is really important to us.” We made a deal with her. But then 2014 was a disaster. Everything fell apart. Showtime started losing interest, so we kicked the tires at Netflix and Canal+. Then Ilene took the job running Empire. So we lost the network, we lost the showrunner. We had a script, but what do we do? It was just a nightmare.

ATWOOD One of the background stories about the book was that in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected, the evangelical religious right became politically active and started saying things like, “Women’s places in the home.” I wondered if that were so, how are you going to get them all back in there, since they were running around having credit cards and jobs? After the Berlin Wall came down in ’89, everybody in the 1990s went, “Things are wonderful. We’ll just go shopping.” Then 9/11 happened and that fell apart, and we entered the period that we find ourselves still in today.

STARK The prestigious Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction came out in 2014 and of the top 20 books of all time, The Handmaid’s Tale was No. 2. That gave us a new conversation to launch us. Because Ilene had signed a deal with Fox for Empire, I called FX to see if they could do a deal with Ilene to do both shows. They made us an offer. But I also had sent the script to Craig Erwich [then head of content] and Beatrice Springborn [then head of originals] at Hulu. The day I sent it, Beatrice sent me an article that said: “Handmaid’s Tale is the prestige miniseries that needs to be made now.” She said, “Did you plant this?”

CRAIG ERWICH (DISNEY TV GROUP PRESIDENT) In 2014, Mike Hopkins had come in [as Hulu CEO], and they brought me in to make a push into originals, and I brought in Beatrice and Jordan [Helman, then head of drama]. After we launched the miniseries 11.22.63 pretty successfully, we were like, “What’s our next big event?” Steve had sent us a script for The Handmaid’s Tale series. The person who had written it wasn’t available, so that became an opportunity. We were very aggressive — “aggressive” meaning generous — on the business terms because it was something we really wanted. We were an upstart outfit just scaling up, and we had something to prove.

SLOANE Hulu had a faster path to series. The other offer [from FX] was a more traditional pilot script and pilot episode. This was a couple scripts and then a straight-to-series order. That made sense to roll the dice on an emerging network.

STARK FX had been enthusiastic, but we couldn’t figure it out. There was something about Hulu’s energy and passion. Once we started negotiations, the deal was closed in 11 days. That never happens. So we had to find a showrunner. I had produced Medium with Bruce Miller years ago. [I was told] he loves this book and wanted to make the show. At the top of our search, my response was, “We can’t have Bruce. A woman must write this story.”

BRUCE MILLER (SERIES CREATOR, WRITER, EXEC PRODUCER) I read the book when I was in college. It was the first book that taught me how to write. I’m dyslexic and a poor reader. But the way Margaret wrote, I could understand better. I fell in love with the voice of Offred, who says all sorts of things that are so puzzling you think about them for years. When I became a TV writer, at some point I heard they were looking for a showrunner, and for a woman — obviously, they should be looking for a woman. It’s the job I always wanted, but I definitely felt like it’s a job that shouldn’t go to me.

ERWICH The way I always pitched the show internally at Hulu was: “This is Hunger Games for adult women.” Or if Lifetime was going to make Game of Thrones. We wanted something that had a genre to it and this was kind of five minutes in the future.

STARK We kept looking at woman after woman. Finally, after three months, I said, “OK, Bruce, tell us your pitch.”

MILLER They met with lots and lots of people, and heard lots of pitches and outlandish stuff. What I pitched to them was: “Let’s make a TV show where, as much as possible, I’d like to follow the book.” I told them I found this to be scary as shit. It’s a thriller. She’s stuck in this house, it’s Rosemary’s Baby, and also it’s absurd. She’s thinking, “Oh my God, don’t hit me,” but also, “Really, you’re going to hit me? What am I, a fucking child?” You have this great internal thinking, which I always loved. Eventually they did decide to hire me.

STARK We heard Bruce’s pitch Sept. 1, 2015 and his deal closed two or three days later. The challenge with the previous draft was that Gilead is such an odd world to process. Bruce had June/Offred walking through the story, so we’re in her shoes learning about this crazy place. That brought you into the story, made you understand and believe it.

ATWOOD What Bruce did that [the film’s director] Volker Schlöndorff did not do — and has since admitted maybe he should have — was he allowed voiceover. Because if you have a regime in which nobody feels confident speaking to anybody else — which is what East Germany was like — you need voiceover to show, “This is the face I’m presenting. This is what I’m actually thinking.”

ERWICH A couple months later he came back with two scripts. I remember Beatrice and I looked at each other and went, “Wow. This is really, really good.” That’s when the ball started to roll.

MILLER When I talked to Margaret, she was so used to having her book adapted — a movie, ballet, an opera and a couple of plays. She thought the whole process was fascinating and fun. She knew it was going to get changed, and we weren’t changing it that much. But the book ends so abruptly, all you want is season two. Why do it if you’re not going to do what happens after [Offred] gets on the van at the end of the book?

ATWOOD I’m not one of those authors who said, “The necktie is wrong. I’m taking my name off the project.” I know the compromises you have to make, and you want somebody who’s going to make the best ones. Bruce and I could talk frankly. He’s so filled with enthusiasm and energy. It wasn’t just a job to him. It was fulfillment of his lifetime dream.

“I’M GLAD THEY WAITED UNTIL ELISABETH MOSS WAS BORN”

After breaking out on Mad Men, Moss was at the top of the list to star. She initially passed. “I feel like we don’t talk about that!” she says. But once producer Warren Littlefield entered the picture, Moss came on board, allowing the series to move forward with the rest of casting.

STARK We were talking about actresses — big names — and Lizzie [Elisabeth Moss goes by “Lizzie”] came up as we were going into 2016. There was a cast contingency from Hulu.

ERWICH We weren’t going to make it unless we had “June.” Lizzie was coming off one of the biggest hits on television. We sent her the script and I remember trying to sell her on Hulu. We were an unknown quantity and she’s an actress who had her choice of where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do.

ELISABETH MOSS (JUNE/OFFRED, DIRECTOR, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) I finished Mad Men in May 2015, and I didn’t think I would do another series for a couple of years. So I said no at first. One of the things I told them I wanted was “a Warren Littlefield-type,” an on-the-ground producer to shepherd the show. Hulu wasn’t Hulu, Netflix wasn’t even Netflix. They had House of Cards, but it wasn’t what it is now. It was a bigger risk.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD (EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) I got a call from my agent while I was doing Fargo [another MGM show]. They were interested in Lizzie Moss and they wanted someone to help deliver on the expectations, which were quite high, off this property. Bruce and I spent a few hours together at a waffle shop for breakfast on Sunset Boulevard — kind of right out of Fargo. I was asked to reach out to Lizzie, whom I was a complete fan of but never met. I said, “Lizzie, there’s a really powerful human drama here. I would make time in my life for this if you would.” She said, “If you do it, I’ll do it.” And boom, we jumped off the cliff together.

MILLER She had a lot of trepidation. But once we started to talk, I was so happy with the way she thought about the character. She was so exactly right. I sent her the second episode.

MOSS I said, “I can’t sign on without seeing the second one.” I remember I was on an elliptical in a hotel gym in Sydney [filming Top of the Lake], and I got to the end of the second-episode script, which ends with June saying [in voiceover], “Fuck.” I remember saying out loud [quietly], “Fuck.” I was like, “Damn it. I don’t think I can say no to this.”

SLOANE We made the first season with a much lower budget than you would think, under $5 million. We were really smart about making every dollar that we had appear on the screen. As we were doing every deal, it was like, “Do you really need all these actors in 10 episodes?”

SHARON BIALY (CASTING DIRECTOR) We’re like, “Lizzie Moss is in?! Fantastic.” Next we cast Ann Dowd. There was questioning from the execs — “Why are you doing that role first?” — but if we can get Ann Dowd, you do that. We wanted to make sure Lizzie wouldn’t wipe anybody off the screen.  I just never expected that I was casting a documentary — and I hope it’s not.

SHERRY THOMAS (CASTING DIRECTOR) Ann had an offer on another project so we had a very small window. We ran down the hall twice to get Bruce: for Ann and Samira Wiley. Joe [Fiennes] was also one of our few offers.

ANN DOWD (AUNT LYDIA) I was riding my bike and nearly fell off because my agent and manager said I had an offer to do The Handmaid’s Tale. There was no audition. I had read the novel. I loved Aunt Lydia. I was educated by Catholic nuns, who were kind, but they instilled in us basic rules. That connected me to Lydia. People say, “She’s so cruel.” She does cruel things, but I happened to have loved her from the beginning.

SAMIRA WILEY (MOIRA) When I first got offered the role, I was like, “I’m playing another gay person?” Moira was written as queer. On Orange Is the New Black, I just played [Poussey, who is LGBTQ]. I said this to my wife [writer Lauren Morelli], and she said, “If you only play gay one more time, this is the one you do it for.”

MILLER Yvonne Strahovski came to audition. She was a lot younger than the Serena we had intended, but she made a case for herself. We had to see a lot of other people, and she waited, very patiently, for months.

YVONNE STRAHOVSKI (SERENA JOY) I do remember Bruce asking me to do a scene a million and one ways! It was the pilot scene — “If I get trouble, I’ll give trouble back.” We all know Serena Joy is older in the book, and I thought it was such a smart decision to make Serena the same age as June/Offred. It adds an entirely new layer of envy and jealousy and ups the competitiveness between them, which is a sick thing for Serena to be feeling under the circumstances.

YAHLIN CHANG (WRITER, SEASON SIX CO-SHOWRUNNER) Max Minghella turned down the lead of another series to do The Handmaid’s Tale.

MAX MINGHELLA (NICK) Nick was not a prominent figure in the pilot, but I was taken by the writing and world-building. I was drawn to him as character. [Nick and June] have a lot of tangible chemistry. It’s amazing that Lizzie and I were cast in these roles without ever meeting — I’ve found a creative soulmate in her.

BIALY A lot of actors passed on the role of Nick but Max was smart enough to realize he was the potential love interest. A lot of people said, “The role’s not big enough.” Now, you see what’s happened.

ERWICH Right off the bat, we had really good choices: Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne, Max. Then you see the pilot and you’re like, “Wow, who’s Madeline Brewer?”

BIALY I remember both Sherry and I cried during her audition. She held this fake baby and sang to it.

MADELINE BREWER (JANINE) I knew I’d be auditioning for a one-eyed handmaid who gets a little out of her head. I was blonde when I auditioned. Lizzie was blonde, and you couldn’t have two blondes — of course the crazy one gets her hair dyed red. In my audition, I did, “Welcome to the fucking loony bin,” from the pilot. I also did the scene where Janine’s having a flashback to a former life after they’ve taken her eye out. And I did the scene when Janine gives birth and is singing to the baby Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” I’ll never forget the day I got the call. I had never had a series regular job.

EVER CARRADINE (NAOMI) I first read for Rita, and obviously I didn’t get it because that role is meant for Amanda [Brugel]. When I got the role of Naomi, it was a recurring guest star and supposed to be five episodes. My first day on set was the scene where Janine is giving birth to my future baby, and I’m giving fake birth behind her. I’ll never forget walking into this giant mansion and it was so immersive. I didn’t recognize Maddie from Orange Is the New Black because she looked so different with the one eye.

O-T FAGBENLE (LUKE) I got the call, and what’s funny is that, for the greatest show I’ve been apart of, I was really pleased but was also thinking, “This means I’m going to sign a seven- or eight-year contract with Hulu.” At that time, everyone was like, “What’s a Hulu?”

MILLER The devotion to Margaret’s world paid great dividends in the casting. I had people come in who read over and over again for different roles. In Canada, everybody had read the book in high school. The book had its own set of fans and that’s one of the things I took to heart. My assignment was: “Don’t screw it up.”

AMANDA BRUGEL (RITA) At 14, I was in a Canadian literature class and fell in love with how Margaret writes female protagonists. In grade 10, I won a scholarship to apply for universities. To get into my writing program, you had to submit a thesis, so I chose to write it on The Handmaid’s Tale, but specifically Rita. She was the least featured and I’m most interested in the person least featured. They’re able to get away with a lot. Twenty years later, I got the role as Rita. I almost had a nervous breakdown. It was a one-day role with the promise there could be more, but I knew how much she was in the book.

FAGBENLE My second day shooting with Lizzie, I had this moment halfway through the scene when I was like, “Jesus, this woman is fire!” I pulled her aside and I said, “You’re really good.” And she said, “I know.” (Laughs) We had a very funny banter from day one.

MOSS When I signed on, my team said, “They want to get you a producer credit.” I said only if they’ll actually let me produce. I’m sure everybody shrugged. But Bruce and Warren took me seriously, and I did learn how to be a producer that first season. After season one, Warren called me and said, “Bruce and I would like you to be an executive producer in season two. We feel, quite frankly, that’s the job you did in season one.”

ATWOOD Miller hired Reed Morano for the first director, somebody who had never directed drama but music videos, which is why it looks so lush and choreographed — because Hitler used to choreograph his rallies like a ballet. Miller hired a brilliant costume designer, Ane Crabtree, who literally tried out 50 shades of red to get the right one. Bruce was so funny during our advanced publicity. He would say, “Hi, my name is Bruce Miller. I’m the showrunner of The Handmaid’s Tale, and I’ve got one penis too many. But I hired a lot of women.”

MILLER It should have been made into a series a long time ago. I’m glad they all waited until Elisabeth Moss was born.

MOSS We used to call it the triangle: me, Bruce and Warren. All decisions came back to the triangle. Picking the handmaids’ red color was a big deal. Reed and Colin Watkinson, our first DP, were in charge of choosing that red. But the only way I could sign off was if I saw it in person. So this large piece of fabric was FedEx-ed overnight. I remember pulling it out and saying, “Yep, that’s it.” Obviously, I still have that. I also have the original costume.

ANE CRABTREE (COSTUME DESIGNER, SEASONS ONE AND TWO) I’ve done this for 35 years, and this one has stuck in my heart. It’s emotional still, and I haven’t been on the show since 2018. Everything about the costumes is psychological. It’s about donning this tribal way of identifying, through the use of color, and a lot of that was written in the novel. The puzzle that I posed to my team was: Where did Gilead get this fabric? This is a world where we only have a certain amount of things in our closet because there’s only so many people in Gilead who can make the fabric, and it has to last. The outfit was also an economical design. How do you add and take away pieces for weather? For sex or to have babies?

MILLER The cloak is such a complicated symbol. The symbol of a woman who’s a sexual reproductive slave in Gilead, but inside all of these imprisoned people is not just a potential to have babies, but the potential to bring Gilead down. Like we say [in season six]: They never should have given them uniforms if they didn’t want them to be an army. It really is its own kind of red.

CRABTREE Red is also the most difficult color to film and can look hideous when done wrong. The idea of making the color of the cloaks a color out of nature, a color from a red Japanese maple, was the answer, and it then turned into the color of blood and all humans have the same color blood. That became the color of the handmaids. The whole process took a few months.

ELISABETH WILLIAMS (PRODUCTION DESIGNER, SEASONS TWO THROUGH SIX) Red is very symbolic on the show. And Leslie [Kavanagh] and I both feel like it’s a choice to have that color be reserved for the handmaids. Every time we go back to Gilead, we go back to the red. We kept it out pretty much of everything else.

LESLIE KAVANAGH (COSTUME DESIGNER, SEASONS FIVE AND SIX) Ane and I had a little bit of dialogue when I took over the show. One thing I do know that happened originally with the handmaids’ costume was they were built to be uncomfortable, because it was built from a male viewpoint and men don’t think about having to raise your arms or if you can you move. For the final season, I did little throwbacks to pay homage to each designer [before me].

CRABTREE Initially they didn’t want to do the wings [the white bonnet]. According to Lizzie and many of the actors, it helped them to act in a different way. When I see the cloaks now being used as a symbol of resistance, it makes me really nostalgic for the moments that it was just a cloak.

“TRUMP … MAY BE GOOD FOR THE HANDMAID’S TALE”

The show was filming the fourth episode of season one at Cinespace Toronto when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. No one could have predicted how the series would resonate (except, maybe, Atwood). Before the show even launched, the now-iconic red cloaks were being used as a real-world symbol for resisting the patriarchy.

SLOANE When we first started writing the scripts, Trump wasn’t even the candidate yet. He becomes the candidate, and in a script early on there was a line: “Make America great again.” When Trump started saying that, we asked [Bruce] to pull it out. We didn’t want it to look like it was pulled from any headlines.

MILLER It was in a flashback scene when Nick was being recruited and told, “It’s time for us to get out there and do some work, make America great again.” I think we changed it to “Make this country great again,” because I happened to nail their phraseology.

LITTLEFIELD We were making a show that was developed in the Obama years, and when we were filming episode four, we stayed up all night, probably drank too much, and watched No. 45 come into our lives. That was a game changer. We were doing a show that we hoped would be a powerful drama about women’s rights, and all of a sudden it was a whole other thing.

ERIC TUCHMAN (WRITER, SEASON SIX CO-SHOWRUNNER) We were filming the scene where Waterford [Fiennes] says the line, “‘Better’ never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some.” Here we were working on a very feminist show, and everybody expected we were going to elect the first woman president.

STRAHOVSKI It was a somber mood on set. We made a circle with our chairs when weren’t filming and sat together. People just wanted to sit together and hold each other in space.

DOWD I was home. I opened the paper and the New York Times said “Trump” in big letters. I wrote to Lizzie, “What are we going to do?” She wrote back, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

MOSS I remember sending that to Ann and not knowing what to say. So, as I have many times in the past, I relied on better writers than me to say it better than I ever could.

WILEY I had no idea that there was even a possibility that history was going to go a way other than having the first woman president. I was flabbergasted. I think that’s where most of my cast was. Even now, are we talking about 2016 or are we talking about 2025? The cyclical journey of The Handmaid’s Tale and the presidency is insane.

STRAHOVSKI Suddenly, we were in the spotlight and became these symbols ourselves. Especially the handmaids. A lot of us have been propelled into this world of politics, which I’m not sure that any actor expects.

BREWER Still to this day, seeing a sea of red robes walking in twos is jarring. It’s eerie and uncomfortable, but also beautiful, the way those robes move and to see an army? We obviously didn’t know at the time that this [final season] would be about them becoming an army of handmaids.

ATWOOD Nothing changed in the script [with Trump’s election]. But the way people saw the show changed. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, people would’ve said, “We missed that bullet, let’s sit back and enjoy ourselves.” But that is not what happened. And instead of people saying, “What a cute fantasy,” and “Margaret is weird,” people said (covering her mouth), “Here it comes.”

SLOANE In season one, episode two there is a flashback where they get gunned down at the women’s march. We had already locked that episode when it was Trump’s inauguration and there were women’s marches. Friends were asking me to go, but I had just watched the dailies of this scene and I had too much PTSD. I said, “When my show airs in April, you’ll understand why I can’t go. But I’m there in spirit.”

CARRADINE There’s a scene in episode nine where Janine is on a bridge and she has [her daughter] Angela. It was a big scene and we shot one direction one day and the other direction the next day. One direction was the last day of Obama’s presidency and then we spun around to shoot the other side, and it was the first day of the Trump presidency. That is such a metaphor for this whole experience.

LITTLEFIELD As Hulu was looking at the cuts, they did utter, “I don’t know if Trump will be good for America, but it may be good for The Handmaid’s Tale.” All they said was, “Find a ray of hope. We need a ray of hope.” We would say, “You read the scripts, right?” But June carried forward the hope because despite every reason in the world to give up, her resilience is what propelled the show forward and I think the audience to stay with us.

MILLER Every time I thought Hulu would balk at a controversial storyline, they didn’t. It’s a story of a society that’s built on rape. You’re going to show sexual assault because that’s what it’s built on. I’m trying to minimize what we see and maximize what we feel. You don’t need to be there to see what happened to poor Emily [when Alexis Bledel’s character underwent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)], but when we show the impact, that should be real. So real that you think you saw it.

ALEXIS BLEDEL (EMILY) It was deeply upsetting to even imagine Emily going through something like that — being captured, powerless, with no say over her body. I was actually offered the role [of Emily/”Ofglen”] and when I read the pilot script I immediately said yes. Somehow, Bruce just knew I had Ofglen in me.

MILLER But sometimes you do have to see it to feel it. When Nick and June sleep together, you have to be there with them because the poor woman has been waiting, and she’s not willing to become someone who doesn’t have a sexual life.

MINGHELLA Lizzie and I approach Nick and June and that relationship with a massive sense of playfulness. We’re very aware of the dynamic and enjoy exploring it. It’s coming from an enjoyment of the romantic melodrama genre. But to quote David Fincher, “People are perverts.” There’s something about the darkness of the show that I thought would be its strongest asset when it came to getting people to pay attention to it.

STRAHOVSKI I never judged Serena from the outside in while I was thinking about how I was going to play her. But there was a lot of judging on my part once we got into very tricky scenes — the rape scenes, the ceremony scenes. I had to live in this split personality of understanding her actions, however cruel they might be, while at the same time I’m with the audience and it’s really easy to judge her for who she is. It was morally challenging in the beginning. It felt dirty to be playing her. How could I possibly stand in this woman’s shoes and give this performance when I bleed for the other character in real life?

“HILLARY CLINTON JUST QUOTED US”

Season one launched April 26, 2017. Trump was a few months into his presidency, and the series was the streamer’s most watched premiere ever. That September, the show swept the Emmys with eight drama series wins, including best actress for Moss, best writing for Miller, best supporting actress for Dowd and the first streaming drama series Emmy, capping a breakout year and launching a new era for Hulu. Production on season two began two days later.

LITTLEFIELD Hulu was tracking intent-to-view data and they said, “It looks like people are really interested. I think we’ll spend a little more money.” That was from the moment the first piece of promotion went on the air at Super Bowl LI in 2017 — a bold, big bet by Hulu [which cost $5 million for 30 seconds of airtime]. Fox said, “For a 50 percent discount, we’ll give you a second spot in overtime.” In the history of Super Bowls, has there ever been an overtime? No. But they took the deal. There was overtime and our red revolutionary promo ran twice. The next morning on Amazon, The Handmaid’s Tale was the No. 1 book.

ATWOOD The launch party in Los Angeles was very themed — we had handmaids and guardians restrooms. My film agent, Ron Bernstein, said, “I hate to say this, but you’re the only person who has benefited from the election of Donald Trump.”

ERWICH We had one blip. There was a moment where there was this panic over, “Handmaid’s Tale is a book that’s 20 years old. Should we change the title?” Which I thought was ridiculous and not a good idea. I used to joke, should we call it, Handmaid’s Tale: Counterstrike Force? (laughs) We were able to weather that storm.

SLOANE When the show released and it had been four months since Trump took office, Hillary Clinton was giving a speech at Planned Parenthood and she quoted the show. There is a line in the series that says, “We were all so busy looking at our cellphones, by the time we looked up, it was too late.” And she said, “So look up, it’s not too late.” Those aren’t things you can plan for.

ERWICH I remember the night of our upfront [in May 2017] Beatrice calling me at midnight to say, “Oh, my God, Handmaid’s Tale on SNL.” That was when I was like, “Okay, we’ve made it.”

THOMAS We did a show with Vanessa Bayer, who played Janine on SNL. Vanessa said to me, “That woman deserves all the Emmys. I’ve done it for four minutes at a time on SNL, and I can’t even think straight.”

WILEY With fans on the street, it would always feel like a one-off in the very beginning. Like that person just happens to watch elevated television. (Laughs) But then this show became what people talked to me about the most.

DOWD A woman came up to me at the airport, and she said, “I know you!” in that accusatory way, like you committed a crime. I knew where it was going. She just bolted, and I laughed out loud.

ERWICH All of the indicators of success were there. We had metrics indicating people signed up for Hulu because of Handmaid’s Tale. The reviews and social conversation were becoming apparent that this had inserted itself into the culture in a really sticky way. It was a success by every metric.

STARK They don’t share this with us now. We never know anything! However, it was so incredibly overwhelming for Hulu that their enthusiasm did contribute to slightly more transparency. (Laughs)

LITTLEFIELD Nothing could have been a better commercial than the Emmys. There are photos at 2 a.m. of Lizzie and I dancing with our arms in the air and each of us holding an Emmy. I had a meeting not long after at Hulu in Santa Monica, and the lobby was under construction. Craig said, “We had to rebuild the lobby because we didn’t have the trophy cases to handle our success.”

MILLER That was my first time at the Emmys. I didn’t think it would be so meaningful, the industry part of it. You really feel that it’s your peers. And so many departments and so many women in those departments were recognized. All those things they told me never to do in TV writing school — never do voiceovers, don’t write a show with a female lead, don’t do silly costumes and weird names — every single freakin’ rule, I broke. You feel like, “Well, I can break any rule now.”

BRUGEL When we won the Emmy year one, Oprah was the presenter who said, “I now present … The Handmaid’s Tale!” I got to walk Margaret up the aisle, passing all these celebrities to Oprah onstage. I never ever will forget it. Oprah also later appeared in the show [in a voiceover role] in season two.

THOMAS Oprah was the most famous guest star we ever had, and that was Lizzie making a personal phone call.

DOWD I seriously did not expect to win [best supporting actress]. Whenever my name was called, I remember sitting there and my husband said, “You have to stand up.” I stood up and then after a few beats he said, “You have to walk.” (Laughs)

MOSS That was quite a few nominations down the line for me, and obviously I’d never won. [Moss had seven best actress nominations before winning the 2017 Emmy.] You don’t go into that expecting to win. But that win helped because it means you have a seat at the table for longer. You’re like, “We’re definitely doing a season two and we could probably get season three.”

FAGBENLE I remember saying, “This show is amazing but I feel like the appetite for something this dark is quite niche. So amongst those who can tolerate such darkness, it can be a hit but can it be general acclaim?” But after the election things changed and suddenly people were like, “Actually, this darkness is speaking to something in me.”

LITTLEFIELD Our budget increased significantly [after season one]. Was it an open checkbook as I suspect Game of Thrones was? It was not. But cast was rewarded, everyone had a reward. There was extraordinary pressure going into season two and we all felt it, but none more than Bruce and Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang. Yahlin came into the writers room for season two.

CHANG For 17 years, I had been doing network broadcast. I had worked with Bruce on ER, but not since 2004. There was a story about The Handmaid’s Tale getting buzz before it even came out. I DM’d Bruce on Facebook and said, “Congrats!” He wrote back, “Who’s your agent?” I think Bruce got 1,200 submissions for one writer slot. I finally found a show where I felt like I was doing my best writing and the show wanted me to do my best writing.

TUCHMAN Bruce’s choice of writers and his casting of these actors were two of the big keys to the success of the show.

BRADLEY WHITFORD (COMMANDER LAWRENCE) My wife [Amy Landecker] was obsessed with the show [when the role came to me for season two]. I also watched it, and it’s always amazing for me to encounter Elisabeth Moss. The first time I remember her was as a very poised 17-year-old walking onto the set of The West Wing and thinking, “This kid is a ringer.” Then she goes on to become the engine of the golden age of television. (Laughs) They were interested in me to play this guy who was an economist, one of the architects of Gilead. My idea was that he was a Robert McNamara, who was defense secretary during the Vietnam War, a guy whose big brain obliterated his humanity. Originally it was three episodes, then it was two. I was hoping it would be a little audition [for the series]. I was thrilled they wanted to continue with the character.

THOMAS That role became so much bigger than was cast. Bradley is very politically active so I think for him to do something that aligned with his personal politics, moral compass and personal civic duty in a meaningful way made the artistry pop. They kept writing to him.

SAM JAEGER (MARK TUELLO) I had just come off a show and said, “I’m not going to do a guest starring role.” My manager was like, “Have you seen this show?” Then after season two, they brought me back. Bruce didn’t want exposition in the show. He didn’t want to cut to a news reel, so Mark became the face to share what was happening in the larger world.

ERWICH Every year it was the same conversation. The show would write scripts and start production, then something would happen in the landscape and people would say, “Look how close to what the show did is happening now.” It comes back to the power of Margaret Atwood’s novel. Whatever we wrote kind of happened, or whatever happened reflected in what we wrote.

BREWER There’s a scene where Nick arranges for June to see [her daughter] Hannah, and then they rip Hannah out of her arms. This was during the first Trump administration where they were ripping children from their parents’ arms at the border in Mexico. The episode was airing while Melania Trump was wearing a jacket saying, “I don’t really care, do you?” during her visit to the border. It was so prophetic and eerie.

CHANG I found the show cathartic to write because any anxiety or angst I had about what was going on in the world, I channeled into the show. We’re writing a show about an authoritarian regime. We’re imagining stuff that would happen, but the world kept catching up. I cannot believe that as a woman I have fewer rights now than when I started on the show in 2017. I never thought Roe v. Wade would get overturned.

WHITFORD I joke that my career is sort of tracking the death of democracy. I read this book in 1985 when there was a kickback against feminism. When I first was shooting this show, the idea that we would be taking rights away from women in terms of access to healthcare was inconceivable. I remember getting public criticism that a show like The Handmaid’s Tale could never happen. Now, we’re living in crazy times that are dangerously close, and I hope everybody sees those parallels.

LITTLEFIELD Our partners at Hulu let us keep taking risks. Many times we would go into a block and say, “We’re $4 million dollars over budget. How are we going to get this in some kind of a box?” And we managed as we continued to expand the world, and became this cool place for young talent to come and blossom, like Sydney Sweeney [in a season two arc] who really came to play. Once the series was embraced throughout the world, Margaret’s publishers were relentless.

ATWOOD For years and years, I wasn’t going to do a sequel. People bugged me about it quite a lot. I said, “No, we don’t know [what happens to Offred]. That’s what happens in history. People just vanish.” But things were going backwards [with the rise of the right], and therefore we have to look at what might have happened next. How Gilead might have begun to vanish. It’s my belief regimes like that collapse from the inside, sometimes through pressure from invasion, but usually because they become hollowed out from within from power struggles.

MILLER She came to me as soon as she was having the inkling. She gave me a very small no-kill list.

ATWOOD When I published The Testaments, Bruce said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He was very happy to have something later in time that follows up on the people who are children or babies during the original. And it’s a great vehicle for Aunt Lydia. So I did tell Bruce at one point, “You cannot kill Aunt Lydia.” He said, “I wasn’t going to!” I said, “Well, you stuck a knife in her and threw her over the banister.” He said, “She’s in hospital. She’s recovering!”

STARK Margaret started working on The Testaments after season two. She only wanted to do it with us. There were things we had to do to make that book work. We had to move some pieces around.

ATWOOD I wanted to explore Lydia more ever since I’d seen Ann in action in my cameo scene [in season one with Moss]. By the way, it’s very odd to have your leaning lady turn and say, “Hit me harder.” I said, “I might hurt you!” [And she said] “Come on. Give me a good slap.” (Laughs)

DOWD I wonder if Bruce ever wanted to knock Lydia off! I just adore Margaret Atwood. I’m very happy to have it continue because I really do love Lydia. Having the experience of starting already on The Testaments, the way Margaret wrote it just makes so much sense and the writers have captured it beautifully. It’s a very good step from the end of Handmaid’s to the beginning of the Testaments.

MILLER By that point, I wasn’t going to kill off the characters I knew Margaret needed. Lydia is a fucking cat. She has 900 lives, which is exactly how those people survived in those kinds of regimes — they’re very good at stepping slightly out of the way when the shit starts to fall. There was a very specific way to end the series that I thought tied together everything really well. What I pitched in the very beginning as the ending is exactly what we ended up doing.

ATWOOD About the only thing that would be different from real life is that had June got caught, she would have been shot. But you can’t do that because you can’t eliminate your central character. She’s still there because, as there always have been, there are collaborators on the inside helping her. Our rule for the show was: “Nothing that you put in can be pure invention. You always have to tell me when this happened in history.” There’s almost nothing you can make up in this area that hasn’t happened somewhere.

LITTLEFIELD A villain like Fred Waterford should have lasted one to two seasons. But Joe had such strength and power and nuance, we couldn’t let go and we knew we had to. So with a tremendous level of satisfaction for the characters and the audience, he was brutally killed the way so many women who had been victimized were killed in Gilead before [at the end of season four]. That was a really satisfying season ender that opened up Serena Joy to a new journey. The cornerstone of the series has always been the love-hate relationship between June and Serena Joy.

MILLER I had talked to Joe about killing him at the end of the second season. Joe’s the most lovely guy and he’s a despicable character and it’s no fun playing a despicable character when you’re a lovely guy, so I was encouraging him to stick with it. Because June and Serena had such an interesting relationship, Fred became much more than just this sleazy, blowhardy pervert in the story. But when we did kill him, he went immediately to the makeup trailer and shaved that beard off and he hasn’t had it since.

STRAHOVSKI [His death] really changed the game for me because then Serena took a 180-degree turn and all of her circumstances changed. I spent a season in a detention center and then a season trapesing around all different places with different people. It’s been a really interesting ride.

BRUGEL It was incredibly difficult saying goodbye to cast members who had been there since day one. It was shocking and sad when Alexis [Bledel] left after season four. I know other cast members had the privilege to ask the writers [what’s coming], but I found out Rita’s arcs as everyone else did. Margaret really advocated for me, which is the biggest honor of my life, so I think that helped keep me off the chopping block.

BREWER Not having Nina [Kiri, who played Alma] and Bahia [Watson, who played Brianna] there for the final seasons was always a bummer [the two handmaids were killed by a train in season four]. I always felt that [if they killed Janine] I understand how story structure works and it might be necessary. But I also felt really honored if they wanted to see Janine through to the end.

WILEY As a person who has played Poussey [the character killed off Orange Is the New Black] and who had that heartache — I think it would have been fucked up if they killed me! It really has been a privilege to be able to tell a story from the beginning and the middle to the end.

CHANG I do think the fact that we loved our actors so much did save them from death! (Laughs) That was a tension, because it’s Gilead. You have to kill people to make it continue to feel brutal and scary. But we just fell in love with these people.

“THIS IS NOT A SHOW THAT NEEDS A MALE SAVIOR”

The penultimate episode released on May 20 (spoiler alert!) brought a tragic end to Nick and Lawrence, the High Commanders played by Minghella and Whitford, as well as season six star Josh Charles‘ Wharton. The May 27 series finale will have the task of sticking the landing for The Handmaid’s Tale while also setting up sequel series The Testaments, the forthcoming Hulu/MGM adaptation of Atwood’s follow-up novel now in production.

SLOANE Hulu had always said to Bruce, “We’ll do as many seasons as you feel creatively you need to tell the story.” At some point, Bruce was like, “I think it’s 20 more episodes.” We said we’d do two seasons of 10. It’s so rare now to end a six-season show on your own terms. People ask, “Is it bittersweet?” It’s just sweet.

TUCHMAN We had discussed maybe splitting the sixth season up to do another season, two seasons of six episodes. We talked about episode eight being the end of this season [and doing another]. Or burying a pilot of The Testaments in a season 6B of The Handmaid’s Tale. But by that point, we’d already broken out this season.

LITTLEFIELD In 2019, I had a strategic meeting with Bruce, Steve, Lindsay and Hulu to ask, “Are we going to allow ourselves to say, ‘What’s the 10-year plan?’ Margaret has just published The Testaments. That is critical for our future.” We had said we’d do five maybe six seasons and from there, we want to transition and that transition should be butted right up against The Handmaid’s Tale. And here’s the good news: If this whole Gilead thing becomes irrelevant, we’ll go away and you’ll never have to do this show.

MOSS I was one of the only people who was like, “Anyone for season seven?” (Laughs) Because it’s not just the material. It’s the alchemy of the group; it’s difficult when you have to move on from that. What’s so great about the landscape now is that we could do something in a few years if we wanted to. There’s nothing saying we can’t. But I do think that where we ended it is right.

MILLER For the rest of my career, I will be measuring any experience against this one. I said it a long time ago: As long as Elisabeth Moss wants to say them, I will write her pretty words until she tells me to stop. She is the handmaid in The Handmaid’s Tale. There were episodes where she’s in every shot, not just every scene. There’s few people you can compare, just on the amount the show rests on them.

CHANG Now I feel like I wish we’d really considered a season seven. If they gave us a room, Eric and I could get together and noodle some ideas with Lizzie.

LITTLEFIELD Yahlin and Eric were such an instrumental part of making Handmaid’s Tale successful. They took over as showrunners for season six so Bruce could focus on the development of The Testaments. Six weeks after we finished shooting Handmaid’s Tale, we were shooting The Testaments.

MOSS It was very organic [to executive produce on The Testaments]. I don’t even remember being asked. (Laughs)

STRAHOVSKI At first I thought ending the show felt appropriate. I wanted to say goodbye to Serena and be done with everything she represents. I got so excited that I made an appointment to dye my hair pink and re-pierce my nose ring. But when we had two more months to go, I realized I was devastated. Suddenly the thought of saying goodbye to Serena seemed horrible, and it struck me how much I’ve grown to love her. She’s been in my life for almost the last decade. It was so strange to know that I was not going to be in her shoes ever again, not like that, not with these people.

WILEY This show will stay with me forever. But the part of our work mirroring life, I’m actually happy to be done with. It’s a bit too much. I don’t need for the show that I’m on to be mirroring what is happening nationally and globally. I wish I could say “maybe” and tease [The Testaments], but that’s going to be a no for me.

WHITFORD On Margaret’s book tour [in 2020], I interviewed her for an event and I told her I felt a little self-conscious because I play a character she didn’t write. She said, “I just can’t believe you’re still alive.” (Laughs) I said, “Well, don’t tell the writers.”

TUCHMAN When you’re going to kill off characters, you want them to go out with a bang. You want to have it land in a big way. Literally, in this case with Max and Bradley, and Josh Charles also explodes [in the penultimate episode], all three of them have a very memorable ending. When Bradley turns to June when he’s about to step on the plane and puts his hand on his heart, I had scripted it as a little salute, which is nowhere near as moving. That moment guts me every time. His expression is so emotional, then the way he’s sitting on that plane, knowing what’s about to happen, is powerful.

WHITFORD That gesture was always in my head. But the last scene we shot was on the plane. I felt off. Just because I was just dreading it. Lizzie was directing. Max is the dearest soul to me. And the [Toronto] crew is the sweetest crew on the planet — despite whatever [President] Trump may think of Canadians. I just didn’t want to say goodbye. I really was rooting for Lawrence to end up on the right side of history. But it can’t come too easy. This is not a show that needs a male savior (laughs). In that final conversation with Nick on the plane, I think Lawrence is thinking, “This poor kid is another victim of this hellscape of that I created.”

FAGBENLE When I read Nick’s death I thought, “Boy, you’re gonna piss a lot of people off!” But the job of this show is not to tell you everything’s going to be okay. This is what life and love and betrayal can look like and, how do you live on after that?

MILLER I know Nick’s death is controversial, but it felt inevitable that June was going to lose him that way. They’re fighting on opposite sides and eventually, one of them is going to come upon the other at a time where they could die or sacrifice themselves. Gilead is a terrible, brutal, death-filled world with a lot of loss. Their relationship and their love was amazing, and so unexpected. It almost saved him. He almost made it.

MINGHELLA Everyone had the best intentions to deliver something that would be unpredictable and hopefully satisfying. This is a very poignant way to end for Nick. It was really fitting to finish with Brad, too. We’ve become so close outside of the show so to do our last scene together was perfect.

JOSH CHARLES (WHARTON) Lizzie offered me this role after we worked on The Vale. I’ll be honest, it’s not a call I would normally want to do. Jumping into a show in its final season could be incredibly awkward and have a lot of landmines. But because of Lizzie, the quality of the show, the cast, I said yes. She was completely right. I was welcomed with open arms.

FAGBENLE They redacted the series finale scripts for the cast, so we could only read our own scenes. But I found out from my higher sources what happens in the final few scenes and I was like, “You guys did it. You figured out how to land this plane.”

TUCHMAN I was lucky to be there for the final scene. It was extremely moving. I hope that the takeaway is that no matter how grim or bleak your circumstances, there’s always a light in the darkness, and that you have to keep fighting and never give up and never lose hope.

CHANG One of the best things about the show is we’re telling stories about refugees and displaced people. You can’t just walk into a Hollywood studio and pitch that. The fact that we’re able to give voice to have our characters as Americans go through what, unfortunately, people all throughout the world go through and where we can really empathize with them fills me with hope for humanity.

LITTLEFIELD The Testaments will pick up four years after the Handmaid’s Tale ends, and instead of June’s point of view, the point of view is from young women coming of age into Gilead. They have never known a world that didn’t have Gilead in it. So it’s not all ugly. As Margaret wrote in in the book, the school that educates these young women is Lydia’s school. So we proudly embrace Ann Dowd to carry us forward and she is a very important rudder from one universe into the next.

ATWOOD You can’t ever predict in series television how long it could go, and it’s going to depend on the reaction to the first episodes. But Anne Dowd is so watchable that you can’t take your eyes off her.

DOWD In The Testaments, I’m wearing the same uniform — a beautiful design from Ane Crabtree — and I’ve had the same shoes now for nine years. But she’s changed, no question. She’s working with the Pearl Girls, who willingly join Gilead. Things that have gone on have really shifted the way Lydia sees the world. Everything that goes on in the final season opened her eyes to things she never would have squared off with had she not been forced to by June Osborne.

SLOANE Elisabeth Moss’ presence as a producer, having played June for all those years, is very much felt in The Testaments.

MILLER Just like with Handmaid’s, The Testaments caters to people who don’t know anything about it. I tried to milk as much as I could from the book, but it doesn’t follow the timeline because that Testaments takes place over a very long period of time. “Growing Up Gilead” is the way I phrase it. They go from being children to being married, so you get adolescent wives. It’s the dynamic between girls of a certain age who are as worry-free as you can be in Gilead — with this huge sword, a marriage of Damocles, hanging over their heads.

ERWICH I’ve learned to not be nervous about how a show will be received. We’d be having this conversation regardless if Trump was elected. The show was very popular when Trump was president. It was popular when he wasn’t. It’s popular with him as president again. The Testaments will probably overlap with another administration and regardless, that show will be a mechanism to hold up a mirror and have a conversation about it.

***

Read THR’s mini oral history on the penultimate episode and more final season coverage.

A version of this story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.