[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the three-episode premiere of The Testaments.]
The Testaments faces a challenge now that it’s returned viewers to Gilead. How much should it service The Handmaid’s Tale fans, and how much should it chart its own path?
That balance is what the creative team behind the Hulu sequel series had to find when they began adapting Margaret Atwood’s follow-up novel to her iconic Handmaid’s Tale bestseller. There is, of course, a major thread in both the book and now, the series — and it’s June Osborne, the Gilead universe’s heroine played by the Emmy-winning Elisabeth Moss.
Moss wasn’t just the face of The Handmaid’s Tale. She was also an executive producer on the six-season Handmaid’s Tale, who directed 10 episodes and was a collaborative partner to creator Bruce Miller and executive producer Warren Littlefield. It was a no-brainer for Moss to continue on behind the scenes as an executive producer, but she couldn’t continue on as the star. So they decided to make her a supporting character — and everyone kept that a secret until the show premiered this week.
“Everyone was committed to not doing a season seven of The Handmaid’s Tale,” Littlefield tells The Hollywood Reporter about The Testaments, which is now streaming its first three episodes on Hulu. “And everyone was committed to letting go of Lizzie [Elisabeth] Moss as the star in front of the camera. The Testaments had to stand on its own. Even with the title. Early on, we would think about it as The Handmaid’s Tale: The Testaments. And we were like, ‘Nope, we have to let that go.’ We need to have a vision that stands on its own.”
In 2018, the executive producers of The Handmaid’s Tale, including Littlefield, began engaging with Atwood about the sequel novel she was planning to write, which would become The Testaments. The Handmaid’s Tale was only in its second season at that time. The sequel book was then published in 2019. Behind the scenes (as THR revealed in an oral history), Atwood had given Miller a short “no-kill list” for the characters he had to keep alive in his series, because they would feature largely in her sequel novel. Those characters were June, Aunt Lydia — who is played by Ann Dowd, who returns in The Testaments series — and June’s daughters: Hannah/Agnes, who is played by Chase Infiniti, and Nichole, who is alive in The Testaments series, but is reimagined because of the new show’s timeline.
The book took place 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, but the series only jumps ahead four years. So instead of following a 4-year-old Nichole (who is the Daisy character in the book), Miller reimagined Daisy into the “Pearl Girl” who is played by Lucy Halliday in the series, who has no blood relation to June.
But something they kept about Daisy was her essence — even though she isn’t June’s biological daughter in the series, she is her surrogate daughter, and she’s a fighter. The Testaments series gives Daisy a backstory in the third episode, and, of course, that’s where June comes in: June is Daisy’s handler from the Mayday resistance movement, and Daisy goes into Gilead as a spy. June just doesn’t know that she ended up sending Daisy to the same school where her lost daughter, Hannah/Agnes, also lives since she was taken from June and is now being raised in Gilead.
Below, Littlefield unpacks the intricate yearslong journey to bringing The Testaments to life, how they figured out how to create a Gilead universe, why you won’t see one read cloak — or even the color red — in the first season of The Testaments, and their hopes for at least three seasons to tell this next story. “We’re in the writers room for season two,” he reveals.
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When we spoke at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, you all were being careful with what you wanted to share. But the time jump was something you shared — you knew you were going to jump this show four years ahead.
Yes. We calibrate that as somewhere in the three-to-four range after the ends of Handmaid’s.
How did you land on that?
It became this exercise of math to figure out the age to portray Hannah [June’s daughter in Gilead]. If you go back to episode one, the first opening sequence of Handmaid’s Tale, we find June clutching onto Hannah, running through the woods trying to escape the forces of Gilead. They’re captured. They’re separated. And then we followed June for six seasons. Hannah is thought of and occasionally accessed, but now we pivot to: What happened to Hannah?
In Margaret’s rendering [with the book], it’s a multi-point of view, which Bruce [Miller] embraced. And that is Hannah/now Agnes, Daisy — who has different origins from the book for a number of dramatic storytelling reasons — and Aunt Lydia. So it’s a shifted point of view but in our minds, and I think brilliantly for Bruce, it’s the most logical extension of the universe.
Bruce Miller told me that figuring out Daisy was the biggest hurdle and change from the book. But he spoke about keeping the essence of the character and the relationship with June alive.
And holding onto the notion that Daisy is a spy. She’s an outsider going into that world. Yes. The fascinating thing, I think, about the origin of this series, is that in 2018, we started engaging with Margaret about what this might be. And in 2019, the book was published. Hulu and MGM secured the rights, and we had a five-year plan for the Handmaid’s Tale. And that five-year plan, like many good plans, adjusts and became six. But there was a lot of time for Bruce to navigate as we were living in the Handmaid’s world and to start thinking about the architecture for The Testaments.
And then, our partners, god bless them, allowed us the time to really formulate that architecture. When we knew we were in the final season of Handmaid’s, Bruce could really then dive deeply into the development process so that effortlessly, almost, as we were weeping and saying goodbye to Handmaid’s, we could say, “Wipe those tears away because we’re going to be in production in eight weeks on Testaments.” It was a wonderful strategic plan more than five years in the making.
I love that you kept June’s role here a secret until the premiere. Did you feel like that was inevitable she’d sppear, or did you have to figure out the story first and then go to Lizzie Moss?
First and foremost, and I nod my hat to our partners at MGM and at Hulu, everyone was committed to: “Don’t do Handmaid’s season seven,” and “let go of Lizzie Moss as the star in front of the camera.” It had to stand on its own. We need to have a vision that stands on its own without Lizzie Moss the actor, but yes, Lizzie Moss, our partner as an executive producer. She’s invaluable there. But the show had to live on its own. Then occasionally we can get [her].
We were going to fill in the backstory for Daisy, and June would be really helpful for that. We said, “Hey Lizzie, we need you.” June is so embedded in her heart and soul, so Lizzie is happy to do that, but no one knows better than Lizzie that for Testaments to work, there has to be a show without June. We feel like we accomplished that. We’re three to four years later in a different geographic region — we’re in Maryland, Virginia, close to the pulse of Washington. Gilead is still alive but in a different color palette. We’ve done the entire season of Testaments and you never see a red cloak. As powerful as that symbol is, as proud as we are and amazed about what that symbol speaks to in the world, we had to move forward and create something in the universe that stands on its own. And that was acknowledging that we don’t have June to rely on.
There is no red at all?
No red. No red cloak in season one. I won’t say never. But it was a conscious effort that in season one, you will not find a red cloak.
Were you on set with Lizzie for her June episodes?
Yes! You can’t keep me away from Lizzie Moss.
What was it like to see her in this new superhero-like mentorship role? The pro coming to train the newbie and show her the ways.
I said to Lizzie, “Our destiny is that it’s always going to be 2 a.m. when we’re working together.” We’re out at the dock and 2 a.m. and it’s like, “Hell, yeah, let’s do this.” It’s a really incredible gift to be able to get to work with her and with that character. That’s become a really sacred experience, so who cares that we’re up all night and it’s cold in Toronto? Here we are, back again and that’s a joy. And of course, now I’m prepping her next show, which is a very, very different show and a very different character, but we can’t wait to do that. You hope to have these creative relationships that are anything close to the level of reward that we’ve experienced together.
The expectations for this, I imagine, from Hulu and everyone involved are big. But the whole team is back again, which brings some confidence?
We were scared to death! Look at what we had accomplished and the significance for what Handmaid’s meant for Hulu as a service [putting the streamer on the map]. We don’t have Lizzie as our star. She’s our partner. We have Margaret to guide us. We have Bruce reinventing a vision that Margaret had. But there are no givens. I guess our security blanket was having Ann Dowd, a bit of a different Lydia, but having Ann gave us comfort. And then we started casting and Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday — these young women are exceptional and what they brought to it was remarkable. We kept looking at these powerful auditions and thinking, “Ok, I think maybe we can unclench. This might just work.”
Then I had a kind of déjà vu all over again, the same thing I experienced the first day when Lizzie was backlit on the window seat in Handmaid’s Tale, having it again with Chase in The Testaments with the dollhouse behind her at the window. I was like, “Oh, my god, she’s owning this. She’s Agnes.” I looked at Bruce and said, “You know what, this just might work again.” And it feels like it has.
What were some major notes that you got from Hulu? Any big debates?
One of the things we were aware of is that Gilead is an awful place. Crimes against humanity, and more specifically, crimes against women. And now we were dealing with a population that was young women. So violence against young women, we wanted to be ultra-sensitive to. We didn’t invent violence against young women, but if we portray it in any way, we really want to walk carefully, and that’s different than Handmaid’s Tale. So we did. We got a lot of guidance from outside professionals and we tried to show restraint.
More importantly was also that season one is about an awakening with these young women. And with knowledge comes responsibility, and what we’re left with is the promise of: What will they do about it? But we feel very much that hope lies with the future. Hope lies with these young women. I think that puts us in a place that’s actually more positive than The Handmaid’s Tale. And as we’ve engaged with so many critics now throughout the globe, they are feeling that and echoing that back to us, which is really reassuring. But that was something we were incredibly mindful of with our partners as we went forward with this.
Do you have expectations for how long you hope this show will go?
I think at least three seasons to tell their story. Of course, the awakening is not universal. What I love is how specific our cast has become in who they are and how they interpret this world, so that awakening is coming at different times in our narrative, and it will be manifested in all different ways based on their alliances, their personalities, how they respond. But awakening we will have. And I think the fun is, how do these young women respond? How do they band together and become just as fearsome as Gilead is?
If you call season one an awakening, how do you describe a potential season two?
I can’t yet. But we’re in the writers room.
How far along?
In the world that we live in, granting a writers room is a significant price tag. That was a bet that Hulu made for this show. So Bruce and the writers are busy at work every day. They’ve been in the writers room for six or eight weeks. We’re cranking. We’re going to be prepared. But I can’t give you that synthesis yet until we get the results of that labor.
How would you describe what June’s role will evolve to in season two or beyond, similar to this season?
As needed. That is a wonderful, powerful dessert in our menu. But we can’t and we won’t be overly dependent on it. I think that would undermine The Testaments. But look, there are other characters who can come into play from The Handmaid’s universe. We are in that universe, and so I hope there will be surprises. But those are surprises that only add; we’re not dependent upon them.
Was there any big changes you discussed with Margaret Atwood when making The Testaments?
Margaret is remarkably flexible. Her work has been adapted into plays, into operas, into a movie. Margaret is more flexible about adaptation that I think we are. And so we always pitch, she loves pitching back. But she’s unbelievably flexible, so when we said, “It’s three to four years and here’s why,” it was very much an embrace.
What did she make of the Daisy change?
She understood the wisdom of it, and she fell in love with Lucy. And with Chase. She was quite blown away by our cast’s performances. She’s grown very close to Ann over the years. There’s a wonderful bond there, and I think that also infused her creative process as she wrote The Testaments. She got to know Ann and she wanted to do right by Ann, and that’s a beautiful relationship.
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The Testaments is now streaming its first three episodes, with new episodes releasing at 9 p.m PT/12 a.m. ET Tuesdays on Hulu. Head here for a refresher on how The Handmaid’s Tale set up The Testaments.
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