‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Star Samira Wiley Is Done With Trauma

[This story contains major spoilers from The Handmaid’s Tale series finale, titled “The Handmaid’s Tale.”]

In the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, no character ended up where they started. That rings true for Moira, the Gilead survivor who has been played by Samira Wiley since the Hulu series began.

Moira emerges from the dystopian saga with a new lease on life. After six seasons spent helping others and mainly fighting June’s (Elisabeth Moss) battle to get daughter Hannah back, Moira ends the series somewhat open-ended but with a vow to begin living life more for herself. “Her story has been in tandem with June’s story, and now I see her focusing on individuating and trying to figure out what her story is,” Wiley tells The Hollywood Reporter as she imagines Moira’s next steps after the series faded to black with its May 26 series finale.

Though Gilead is falling and the fictional universe now turns to sequel series The Testaments, Wiley makes clear that her time in this groundbreaking yet eerie world is over. Wiley spoke to THR for a recent oral history on the series and below is the full conversation, where she explains why she’s making a pivot similar to Moira, as she looks to put playing traumatic roles behind her.

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When you first landed the role of Moira, you were coming off of Orange Is the New Black. Your fan-favorite character Poussey Washington was killed off the series in a pivotal arc. Then you had a guest role on You’re the Worst. Were you looking for another long-term series when Handmaid’s then came along?

Was I looking? Yes, I needed a job! (Laughs) Handmaid’s was an audition that came to me from my agent. I was getting a lot of things, but I didn’t know the significance of the project. I didn’t know who [Handmaid’s Tale author] Margaret Atwood was. Apparently, I was supposed to read the book in school. I remember coming home after the audition and telling my wife [writer Lauren Morelli] about it. She was like, “What? They’re doing that?!” Luckily, like most things in my life, I didn’t realize how big it was until afterward ao I was able to be cool about it and not have too much pressure.

Do you remember your audition scene?

It was two scenes. One isn’t in the show and was with June [Elisabeth Moss] and Moira in college. I come in late, like a walk of shame, and June is asking me where I’ve been. I’ve obviously been with some girl and I’m being cryptic about it. It was just a little exchange between the two of them in a flashback. The other was the scene in one of those very first episodes, after Janine [Madeline Brewer] has gotten her eye plucked out and has gone a little crazy. We’re telling her she needs to get back in bed, and I slap her.

That’s an intense audition. Did that set you up for what was to come with the material?

Yes. I remember when it came time to actually film that scene and being like, “I know this one. I’ve done this lots of times!”

You and Madeline Brewer — two of the biggest deaths on Orange Is the New Black at that time — landed on Handmaid’s Tale together. Did that reunion help as you were all finding your footing?

Yeah, it really, really was a nice reunion. Honestly, Maddie’s time on Orange ended so quickly that our characters didn’t get that much time together. So I don’t think I really understood how much of an amazing actress she is. I mean, she’s a chameleon. Seeing all of her work from Orange to Handmaid’s, and then I saw her in Hustlers. I’m like, “Who are you, woman?” (Laughs) I am a fan of Maddie’s.

Coming from Orange, maybe the darkness of Handmaid’s didn’t shock you as much. Or did it still, in those early episodes?

I’m a little flower, it all shocked me! I mean, it is shocking. Season one, the entire season is written in the book. You know what’s going to happen. But then you get the script. No one’s seen it. We haven’t filmed it, and just reading what I’m about to do and go film? Every time, I was shocked.

Is there one scene from that first season that has stuck with you?

It wasn’t really my scenes, because most of the shocking things season one were in Gilead and I was gone at Jezebel’s. But I remember when we were at the Red Center. We’re all [the handmaids] sitting on the beds. Aunt Lydia’s [Ann Dowd] in the middle of teaching us, and we’re sitting there mimicking the [rape] ceremony. Lydia hasn’t totally told us what it is. And in the middle of the scene, I raise my hand like, “Wait, do you mean we’re about to be… having sex with these people between the wives legs?” I read that and I mean, that’s the whole thing. You know that’s happening. But sitting there reading it after you know who’s cast — that I know I’m going to be sitting there talking to Ann Dowd while holding Lizzie’s [Moss goes by “Lizzie”] legs? With all of those particulars in your head, it was shocking over and over to me.

When we spoke at the beginning of this final season, you talked about how Moira found her fire again in the end. You said it reminded you of the Moira that you signed on to play, the one Margaret Atwood wrote. What about this character drew you in?

She’s so casually revolutionary. “Come what may, I may take down the patriarchy today.” There’s something easy about her activism and her sense of duty. Usually those things are either or. Either you’re on the front lines or you don’t care. She doesn’t care that she cares, and there’s something really attractive about that. Something seductive even.

I was coming from Orange and playing this sweet, lovable character [Poussey]. And in wanting to bring authenticity to these different characters, especially both of them being Black queer women, when I first got offered the role [of Moira], I was maybe not going to take it. I was like, “I don’t know. I’m playing another gay person?”

Was Moira written as queer?

Yes. I felt like, “I just did this. I don’t know if I want to play another queer person.” And really, that’s backwards thinking. What white dude is like, “Might not want to play straight again. Don’t want to get pigeonholed!” That kind of thinking is reducing me and my community to our sexuality, which is obviously not what I want to be doing. I had shared these concerns with my wife and she said, “If you only play gay again one more time, this is the one you do it for.”

At the time, Hulu was new on the streaming block. You had already taken a gamble with Netflix when you booked Orange, and that paid off. Did it feel like a risk again to join a Hulu show?

My whole career has fit into this streaming television bubble. I definitely felt that way about Netflix in the beginning. I mean, when we did [Orange], there was zero streaming television. People were like, “Are you on a web series?” I didn’t even know whether the answer was yes or no! So by the time Handmaid’s came, I truly didn’t know anything different. What probably would have felt more foreign to me would have been doing network TV.

But I don’t think too much about how it’s going to be consumed. I just want to work with good people and have interesting stories and dialogue from good scripts. I’ve done things that have never come out that were the greatest experiences in my life. I don’t get upset by it. I’m happy to be there.

Handmaid’s Tale launched in 2017 shortly after Donald Trump’s shock first presidency, and it concludes amid Trump’s second presidency. We’ve been talking about the cyclical nature of that. (Note: See THR‘s oral history and Handmaid’s column.)

Yes, we started filming before the election in 2016. It was surreal. I remember the scene we were shooting right after [Trump won election]. It’s the scene where June tells me she’s pregnant. It’s interesting because it’s this scene of hope. [Her daughter] Hannah is this hope where we’re moving on. We’ve got this new baby. And on the other side when the takes are ending, we’re like, “We don’t have a new baby.” It felt like shaking up a snow globe and when it settled down, there was this palpable sense of responsibility that we all now had because of what was happening in the world. When the show came out, I’ll never get over seeing these women and people silently protesting by wearing the costumes that we wore.

But it’s something I actually am really happy to be done with. It’s remarkable. This show is something that is going to stay with me forever — that this was a part of my career, the mirroring of the life and the art. But I’m done with it. 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 therefore globally. To be honest, I don’t want to be having those conversations. I want to be talking about whatever show I’m doing, but the weight of what The Handmaid’s Tale has been and the conversations I have had to have, you don’t get a break like other people do from what’s happening out there.

You also experienced that with Orange, since Poussey’s death was symbolic of the Black Lives Matter movement. So you’ve been talking about trauma for over a decade. I just realized that…

I just realized that now too, when you said that! Don’t get wrong, I am honored. But it is a lot to carry. To try to make characters that feel real to people, and then having to talk about young brothers getting their life squeezed out of them. It’s just a lot.

How have you learned to separate yourself from that part of the job over the years?

I think I’m still learning. One of the things I’ve learned now is that I don’t want to learn anymore how to deal with it. At least, I want to take a break, because it’s been very hard. The way that I take on my characters is fully in a way that I can’t always let go of them. It’s almost like I’m experiencing some of their emotions when talking about what’s happening in the world.

I’ve spent so much of my career trying to not say what I just said (laughs), and to be a voice for the show and a voice for solidarity. So this is bittersweet that Handmaid’s is coming to an end. Because this part of it? I’m done with. Let’s go make a show about canning pickles!

On The Handmaid’s Tale, any character could die at any time. Were there maybe times where you felt like you would be okay if Moira had died?

No, actually. I never felt that. I think that would have been the easy way out, to wish or hope for that. There’s also an understanding of my responsibility as a spokesperson and a visible person in the queer community. So I wasn’t hoping for that. It really has been a privilege to be able to tell a story from the beginning and the middle to the end. As the person who played Poussey and had that much heartache — I think it would have been fucked up if they killed me!

Do you remember that shift of when you started getting recognized for The Handmaid’s Tale more than for Orange?

It was gradual 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) Now it’s what people talk about the most. People [who watched Orange] would see me and be like, “Yo, P!” [the nickname of the character]. I feel like they saw me as Poussey and not as an actor.

One time, this dude had just watched the episode where Poussey met her end, and he needed to go get something from a corner store, some ice cream to soothe him. I walked in at the same time and it was one of the craziest moments ever being recognized! He started crying. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like if I was in his position. So it was a shift from Poussey to Moira, but it also felt like a shift to people starting to see me as an artist and as an actor who does this work, and that was really cool.

Moira’s ending in The Handmaid’s Tale is open ended. We hear June saying Moira and Rita [Amanda Brugel] are drinking and celebrating because Gilead is falling. Do you think Moira keeps on fighting or settles into a new life? Where do you see her going after the series finale?

I think about Moira as a person who will never rest. But not in a way of struggle, just in a way of never being complacent and never being content. There’s always going to be somebody [to help]. She spent her entire time in Canada working at a refugee center. But I do think that her story has been in tandem with June’s story, and now I see her focusing on individuating and trying to figure out what her story is.

In episode five when she told June that she was tired of living her life, there are things Moira should have been thinking about and should have had the space for: “Where am I going to live? What do I want to put on my walls? What kind of people do I want to date?” All of that real estate was taken up by June. So I imagine her trying to fill her own space that she’s going to move June out of.

There’s a fight that they have where June says they should stop comparing trauma. Viewers don’t see the end of that conversation, because Moira and June are interrupted by the Guardian who comes into their room at Jezebel’s. But Moira takes that in. We shouldn’t be comparing trauma, but I think Moira is going to go and figure out who she is away from June, which I think a lot of people have to do when it comes to individuating from your parents, partners, children, whoever. June is that person for Moira.

So it sounds like you don’t picture Moira popping up in The Testaments and being underground fighting with June…

People keep asking me this. I wish I could tease and say “maybe,” but that’s going to be a no for me [to appear in The Testaments]. Moira’s fight is elsewhere. Who knows? Moira maybe should be there, but I don’t have it in me anymore.

Did the finale episode’s dream sequence that reunited all of you handmaids, including who you lost, feel like your wrap on the experience?

We don’t film chronologically, so that wasn’t my last day on set, but it did happen to be Amanda [Brugel]’s last day on the series. Bahia [Watson] and Nina [Kiri] came back for that scene. Alexis [Bledel] was there. And it was just so light. It was late at night and when it’s late sometimes Lizzie [who directed the episode] would get us a truck, a coffee truck or something. She got us a crepe truck. These crepes were light and airy, full of fruit and it just felt like that went hand in hand. We were up here singing and then we’d go take a bite of our crepe. It was really hard for me to even envision how what we were filming was going to fit into the show. The feeling on set was so different from the rest of the season.

Is there anything you took with you from set?

Everybody knows now. On the day, I was trying to be super [hush-hush], but I found the original handmaid dress that I wore the very first day I ever got on the set. And I took that. The dress, the cloak, the gloves. When I left Orange, I took Poussey’s iconic sweatshirt. I actually wear that. I’m not going to wear the cloak, but it’s something I wanted. It’s iconic.

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The Handmaid’s Tale is now streaming all episodes on Hulu. Read THR’s comprehensive oral history on the series, mini oral history on the penultimate episode, and series finale explainers on June’s ending, Serena’s ending, Janine’s ending, Luke’s ending and Rita’s ending, plus how the finale sets up The Testaments sequel series.