Some lesser-known facts about The Handmaid Tales

The Handmaid’s Tale is the first show produced by Hulu to win a number of awards, including the Golden Globe Award and straight-up 8 Primetime Emmy Awards. The plot showcases a dark gloomy dystopian world, torn apart by a Second American Civil War, where the ‘fertile women’ are summoned to practice child-bearing slavery and are referred to as ‘Handmaids’.

1. The Location

The series was shot in Toronto, Canada. So what? As the fans would concur in the story, the escapers of Gilead, the dystopian society ultimately find their way to Toronto (which was situated in the USA in Margaret Atwood’s time).

2. Is the series based on a book?

Among all other pecularities, the series is not based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, but a season is. As die-hard fans would know the first season ends, where the book ends. But from season 2, the plot is exclusively written for TV. “Even though we are moving past the book, there are some details we have taken from the book and just expanded upon — like the Colonies,” explains Elisabeth Moss.

3. That required sense of eerie.           

Did that creepy dark vibe get you too? Well, it was well-planned by putting concepts of modernity along side age-old dressing sense. “The handmaids [including Alexis Bledel’s Ofglen] look like they belong in a farmer’s market,” says director Reed Morano, who designed the look of the show, with a 64-page look-book. “What is more weird and disturbing is handmaids walking around in a fluorescent-lit supermarket, where there’s no writing anywhere [women are not allowed to read or write in Gilead], and a very limited amount of product.

4. Farther away from reality

Amidst the #MeToo movement and ongoing struggle for gender equality across America, the show exhibits a flawed visionary and this is exactly how the film-makers wanted it to be .“The writers don’t see things in the headlines and then write them in our show,” says Elisabeth Moss. “But there is, obviously, a reason why this show is so relevant — because it is about us, as humans, and what we are going through, in the world, not just in America.”

However,  Bruce Miller, the Executive Producer acknowledged the antithetical cultural aspect.  “You’re starting to hear people verbalise things you didn’t think people thought any more — open sexism and misogyny and racism,” he notes. “As horrible as that is, if it’s being expressed it’s a lot easier for us to understand how people with that attitude think, which helps us write characters who — while behaving in a horrifying way to the audience — believe they are doing good in the world.”

5. The commander and Serena’s not-real ages

Now, one rather odd detail that tells apart the book from the series is the evident age difference between Commander Waterford and Serena Joy from the book and the show. Joseph Fiennes, who played the Commander believes this to lessen the audience’s assumptions and in a way, breaks fixedly set stereotypes. “I think of Syria, and one particular leader, who looks like a very nice academic,” he says. “You would never attribute the horrors happening there to somebody who looks like that. I love the complexity of wrongfooting the audience with someone’s age and the way they look.”