⭐8.5
Description: A religion-based autocracy has taken over most of the United States, renaming the country Gilead. In this country women are second-class citizens. Anyone trying to escape is punished. One such person is June, who is captured while trying to escape with her husband and child and is sentenced to be a handmaid, bearing children for childless government officials. As a handmaid, June is renamed Offred. This is her story.
Creator: Bruce Miller
Stars: Elisabeth Moss, Amanda Brugel, Madeline Brewer
Taglines:
- We will bear no more
- Know the lies behind their laws.
- This is not ordinary.
Trivia
- Margaret Atwood, the source novel’s author, makes a cameo as an aunt in Episode 1. She is the one who slaps Offred when she is reluctant to join in the group shaming circle.
- The actresses have said that the head coverings they wear when they go outside are like blinders, completely cutting off their peripheral vision. The actresses can’t see each other unless they’re looking directly at each other. They have to act largely based on what they can hear.
- Margaret Atwood has said that pretty much everything that happens in the novel has happened somewhere in history: The Bible, the Iranian revolution of 1978-79, the backlash against 1980s feminism, etc.
- Margaret Atwood has said that she was greatly inspired by George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, “1984”.
- In an April 2018 interview with “Salon”‘s Mary Elizabeth Williams, Amanda Brugel (Rita) said that as the self-described “lone Canadian in the cast,” the book changed her life long before she won a role in the show. She was assigned Margaret Atwood’s novel as a 15-year-old high school student and subsequently wrote some short stories based on it. Later she wrote her university application thesis on the novel and received a full scholarship on that basis. Brugel said that the main focus of that university application essay was Rita, the character she now plays on the show.
- Joseph Fiennes claims that his wife does not watch the show, knowing the disturbing nature of Commander Waterford’s character.
- In the novel, Offred’s Commander and Serena Joy are much older than they are portrayed in the series. They are described as wrinkled with gray hair; Serena Joy relies on a cane to walk.