Uncensored Oral History of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Revolution

t to do a futuristic splatter fest, and I thought, I have no desire to see that. Some people would’ve wanted to just leave out the central sexual assault scene. But the central sexual assault scene is the linchpin of the story. Some people would have wanted to give it a happy ending. But giving it a happy ending would not have been a happy ending either. It’s a grim world, and it’s a grim world in the book, and it had to be a grim world in the TV series.

In 2016, the election of Donald Trump made Handmaid’s Tale even more relevant. The Hulu series quickly became the definitive TV adaptation, with some plot developments — like women silently protesting en-masse in Washington, D.C., after the Gilead government opens fire on a crowd — striking particularly close to home.

ELISABETH MOSS (ACTRESS, JUNE/OFFRED) The running theme of the show was: “It could never happen here.” That was my mantra every day. And now it has. Everything is possible. What’s very prescient and accurate to what we were saying — that all we had to do was roll all of women’s rights back was to start by defunding Planned Parenthood — has happened.

From the series’ chilling costumes to its narrative hooks, surprises and relentless sense of urgency, Atwood and Miller — with their diverse writers’ room, including Adams, Miller, Eric Tuchman, Kira Snyder, Christine Lennon and Malcah Zeldis — continued to deliver on critical and commercial expectations as Handmaid’s Tale endured.

BRUCE MILLER (CREATOR/SHOWRUNNER) The tone of the show is absolutely Margaret Atwood. The one starting point that never really budged was, this is a story about people. And one of the ways you contrast the brutality is by finding moments of humanity.

The team was fiercely protective of the Handmaid’s Tale brand, turned down multiple network pitches to do a Male Power Hour miniseries, and experimented with various versions of the grim story, including flashbacks to Offred in the all-American family she once had.

YVONNE STRAHOVSKI (ACTRESS, SERENA JOY) To me, a powerful moment was my character getting her just desserts with the chopping of her finger. One of the main reasons why I went through with it in the sense of not saying, “I don’t want Serena to lose her finger,” is we’re dealing with a world that reflects actions and consequences.

The writing had to be smart in a way that the audience had a better foreboding of what might happen before the characters themselves knew, or at least showed it. The show respected the viewer’s intelligence, making subtle, hefty points that reflected the lyrics and consonances that Atwood carefully wove into her dystopian world.