The Handmaid’s Tale is a difficult show to watch. This is where I should reference a specific scene from the Emmy-winning Hulu series that was difficult to sit through, but I bailed halfway through season one. Not because I didn’t think the show wasn’t good; but it was too real, and I didn’t need to be reminded the world is a nightmare when I already have Twitter, and Facebook, and cable news, and the internet, and… But star Elisabeth Moss (Peggy!) has an answer for her most harrowing scene to film, and it’s probably not what you’d expect.
“Probably the birth scene in season two, where I had to give birth by myself, naked,” the actress said on Jimmy Kimmel Live (I will not link to the scene). She continued, “We had a couple [babies]. There was one baby that, in order to get that post-birth look — the guck that comes on a baby — they put cream cheese and jelly on the baby.” The audience responded to Moss’ answer with oohs and awws (weird!), but there was nothing adorable about actually filming the scene:
“That baby was not ‘aw.’ That baby was not having it. Not having it. First of all, it smelled, which is weird. The cream cheese and jelly was odd. And it hated it, so it was screaming so loud. So I was doing this really emotional scene; I’m like naming the baby after my mother. It was all very emotional and this baby’s just screaming at the bottom of its lungs in my ear.”
Moss must miss the good ol’ days of smoking marijuana and pretending to work for Pizza House, and not giving birth to a cream cheese and jelly-covered baby while naked. Or maybe I miss Mad Men. Or both. It’s probably both.
