There are some shows that start conversations, and then there are some that start movements. The Handmaid’s Tale is the latter. Despite the fact that the source material was published in 1985, this Hulu original feels like a firebrand cutting to the core of modern female rage. Following Elisabeth Moss’s Offred/June, viewers are subjected to Gilead, the new American order that includes religious fanaticism, the stripping away of women’s rights, and inhuman violence committed against the noncompliant.
As the excellent second season kicks off on Hulu this week, star Samira Wiley was kind enough to speak to Uproxx about her character Moira’s journey, expanding the world, and the real-life implications of this kind of radical protest. The Handmaid’s Tale is all about the risk and reward of using your voice, and Wiley is certainly finding hers.
I didn’t think anything could be any more devastating than the first season, but you guys have really created something beautiful and tragic in season two. It is brutal!
Yeah, yeah that’s what everybody keeps saying. I’m sorry, y’all! People keep asking me to describe season two and I just keep telling them, “Well, it’s pretty bleak.” Ultimately I do think, and I would love to hold on to, that the story that we’re telling is a positive one. We see these women get knocked down over and over and over again. But what do we also see? We also see them get up. I would love to think that this story is ultimately a story of hope.
A lot has changed for Moira in season two, now that she’s made it to Canada and is sort of looking at the Gilead situation from the outside.
Yeah, definitely. We left off Moira at the end of season one, she’d just crossed into Canada, and so we start with her life there as a refugee. It’s really wonderful on the surface: you’ve got your healthcare card, you got all this money that you never had before, you got something to work towards every day, all these wonderful things, but she’s living a world that is completely foreign to her.
It’s foreign to her in every single way imaginable. She doesn’t even really know who she really is in it. She does the thing that makes the most sense to her, which is volunteering at the refugee center because it meant so much to her, but she doesn’t really know how to function. Moira is a person that is in real need of some help, and I know that she’s not getting the kind of help that she needs. She’s trying to use herself to help herself and she doesn’t know what to do. She ends up wandering in the clubs, and in one scene she says that her name is Ruby, because that’s another survival technique I think that she learned from the Jezebels. We remember from season one, her having to put on a new identity because it was too much. She took so many drugs and stuff with the Jezebels just to keep a barrier between who she really was and what was going on with her. Of course, it’s not the same thing, but we see similarities in Canada. I mean, she’s really dealing with some intense PTSD I believe, every single day.
Between The Handmaid’s Tale and Orange is the New Black, a lot of your work has dealt with the trauma that comes from being a woman in these extreme situations. How do you approach that as a performer?
I think a lot about staying healthy, meaning that going into these places as an actor, it’s a very intense place to step into. It’s a practice that I have to be diligent about, in terms of at the end of the day making sure that I sort of really leave, sort of extract myself, from Moira. Because it’s so much that she’s dealing with. It’s a lot to really fully go into these characters, into these headspaces, because Moira is pretty fucked up. I mean, she needs to be in constant therapy, and she’s not. And I think that, just for me every day, I’m just trying to remember to fully exit, fully leave Moira behind on stage at the end of the day so that I can function in my life. It’s something that I think that needs to be explored, and I’m glad that we’re exploring it, especially even her own mental health, you know what I mean?
Yeah, definitely. Both these shows that you’re known for are very female-driven ensembles, which is unfortunately rather rare. How does that sort of effect the creative energy on set and how these stories are told?
That’s such an interesting question, because I don’t have anything to compare it to! I mean, my whole career has been working with women, these incredible women in positions of power, and telling women’s stories, and women telling women’s stories, and so I feel completely naïve in a way and ill-equipped to compare it to the other side, because I don’t have the other side. The Handmaid’s Tale, every single episode save for one in season one was directed by a woman. I’ve been surrounded! I’ve been so inspired by all the people, all the women that I’ve been surrounded by in this show. I do think the wake-up call for me will be when I go to another show that’s not like this.
What has become the norm for me has been women telling powerful women’s stories. And I know that it makes me feel like I matter, it feels like my ideas and opinions are important and welcomed on set. It feels like I am a part of a conversation rather than just a set piece. I feel like Bruce Miller, our showrunner, wants to know my opinions. It’s really inclusive, wanting to hear everyone’s voice, and a very safe place. The wake-up call is once I go to a new show.
That’s a beautiful situation to find yourself in.
Yeah, it is. I’m really lucky.
Now I thought that season two — I’ve seen the first six episodes — does a really compelling job with worldbuilding beyond what was in the novel. What was it like to sort of take what Margaret Atwood started and really run with it?
The journey me has been reading each script once the production draft comes out and I’ve really just been awed by the writers, on the show. They have taken this complete world that Margaret has created and just gone crazy with it. Done things I never thought we could do, could explore. The colonies are so amazing. Actually going there, meeting the women there that are so brilliant, and seeing, not just June’s story, but there are women who are also in Gilead who have a completely different story from June. But it’s also valid, and it’s also tragic and it also deserves to be told. So I’m so excited to still see so much of it. I haven’t seen, actually, as many episodes as you have.
I won’t spoil anything, I promise!
Please don’t! I just, I think they’re doing just an amazing job of just fleshing out the entire world, making sure that you see all of these different perspectives of all of these different women. Every single new episode I got to read was just so exciting, so I can’t wait to watch it, and I can’t wait for the world to see it as well.
One of the criticisms that I saw of The Handmaid’s Tale in the first season is how it sort of deals with the experiences of people of color. You know, with white women this society is dystopian, but for women of color, this kind of systemic oppression is history. How have you sort of grappled with that, and do you think that’s a fair criticism?
In the beginning, when we were creating the show and I first read the book, you know the book is definitely a white world, on purpose. In talking to my showrunner Bruce, he just didn’t wanna make a show with a whole bunch of white people on it, departing from the book, which I commend him for and am happy ’cause I have a job now. But also I think that those questions that you’re talking about and the concerns that people are bringing up are completely valid. I think that the intentions of wanting to make this show not a white-washed world are because of 2018, and that’s not the kind of TV that we want be making.
It’s starting in the right place, but there are questions in terms of the rules of the world that we’re living with in Gilead. How does that make sense? You know what I mean? And what are the justifications for that, and just having this open conversation. I think that this is exactly what we need to do, we don’t need to shy away from these questions. I don’t have the answers for all of them, but I think that through conversations that I have with people, I take that and I bring that back to Bruce, and I talk to him about it. Because I want everyone to be talking about it, I want it to be a discussion. And I think that it’s something that we’re, not me, but the creators of the show are figuring out how to make the show respond to that.
Obviously, a piece of art can’t be all things to all people, but it’s an interesting conversation to have for sure.
Absolutely, I think so as well.
The show was obviously in production before the election, but with the cultural shift happening it feels even more urgent and applicable now. There’s a line in one of the first few episodes where June talks about how adaptable women are, and it’s amazing what they can get used to. Right now, it feels like women have really gotten to the point where they’re tired of just adapting. How does it feel for The Handmaid’s Tale to become a symbol for the protests?
Yeah, it’s quite amazing sort of having to realize that, or for me specifically, having to realize that, “Oh gosh, I’m a part of this conversation,” you know what I mean? Like, I have a voice. I never thought that this show would have permeated this much, that everybody would be talking about it, and it would be this relevant. But I really do feel honored to be a part of it. It feels like I have a real responsibility. It feels like “Samira you need to step up to the plate,” know what I mean? There’s direct line from how I feel now in terms of how I would like to use my platform and how I understand my voice to me portraying Moira in this television series.
Even just playing the character, she’s the one that’s always gonna speak up, and I think she has inspired me. And to see Elisabeth Moss, who’s such an amazing head of our show in so many different ways, as an actress, a producer, also as an activist. I sort of am looking around like, “wait, how did I end up here?” But I am happy to be a part of the conversation to lend that voice, but to also to learn. I feel like I’m learning so much just by being a part of this show and having conversations with people and hearing other women’s stories. And I think it’s only helping me as a citizen of the world, really. And I’m thankful for that.
If there’s one thing that you can have viewers take away from season two, what would you have that be?
This is going to be a lot of words, but one idea: just that, how amazing women are, you know? We see, specifically in season two, how these women are knocked down time after time after time again, but the message, I think at the end is about the hope and the light at the end of the tunnel. Honestly this whole handmaids thing… it just makes me think of slavery. That like, American slavery, that keep your head up, keep your eye on thing. I just feel like all I’m saying is like cliché civil rights stuff right now! But to remember the hope and then remember the resilience, and remember that we have a voice. You have a voice, and people are listening.
The Handmaid’s Tale airs Wednesdays on Hulu.
