“I mean, it’s everywhere,” Moss, who plays June Osborne in the series, said in an interview with Parade.com. “There are so many times that I’d be sitting across from an actor this season and we would say to each other ‘Can you believe we’re doing this scene? Can you believe we’re here? Can you believe we’re talking to each other like this in this place?’ And it happens over and over and over again.” “Every single episode is just another wild ride. There’s not a dull moment this season,” she added. “I will say that concretely it is actually our largest season in many ways, but it’s pretty wild.” The new season picks up after the killing of Commander Waterford and sees June continue her mission to reunite with her daughter Hannah, who is still in Gilead. “Hannah’s always, always been the end goal,” Moss said. “I think that what it has probably developed into is trying to figure out how to keep her family safe—[June’s daughter] Nichole and [June’s husband] Luke and Moira—and she’s trying to figure out how to keep them safe. I do think that there’s a side of her that wants to just lead the charge and lead the resistance and go back into Gilead guns blazing, but she has a family, and so she’s trying to figure out how to be the mother and the wife and the friend, while at the same time being this heroine, this person who is this symbol for the resistance.” Continue reading for more on Season 5 of The Handmaid’s Tale, which was in production when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and what Elisabeth Moss told Parade.com about the Hulu series’ relevancy.
Your performance is incredible and this season is insane. For readers who haven’t seen it yet, can you describe June this season and how we find her?
Obviously, at the end of Season 4, I think June thought that she had sort of vanquished her enemy. That she was going to release herself from this villain of Fred Waterford. And in the first episode, it’s a less than 24-hour period and it takes place basically right after the murder. She’s in this euphoric place. She’s feeling like she just had this incredible experience. She’s feeling the relief of it, and then her world starts coming in, consequences start coming in, her family starts coming in. People start asking her questions. People start asking her what’s next? What is she gonna do next? Who are they going after next? Who are they going to kill next? And she’s going, “Wait, wait, I’m not that person. I needed to do this for myself. But I’m not a violent person.” She’s saying that [while she’s] covered in blood. She has to deal with who this murder has made her. Who is she now and can she be the woman who was holding her child and her baby and the woman who with those very same hands killed this man? And how can she be both of those women?
What challenges, if any, did you encounter playing June this season?
Playing June is probably the easy part. The harder part is the production and the directing side. It’s doing those two other jobs that are the more challenging part, I think. Because at any given point in the season, I’m working on many episodes at the same time. So days that I just go to set as an actor and get to just act are actually the easier days for me because that’s what I’ve been doing for 30 years. The rest of it, the production challenges, the things that we go through as a crew for the eight, nine months that we shoot these days ‘cause of COVID, you know, those are the challenges that are the ones that I think of when you ask that question. Trying to shoot safely, trying to keep everybody safe, trying to keep everybody healthy. Trying to keep everybody healthy, but also working, that’s the challenge.
You can say that again! June made a decision in the Season 4 finale and she has a chance to do it again this season—no spoilers! What’s driving her decision-making this season compared to last?
She has the chance—Oh, I know what you’re talking about. How do I answer this? We’re trying not to spoil anything, right? … Okay, I think when she has the chance to make that decision again, the decision that she made in the finale last season, it’s a different situation. It’s a different person. She answers as honestly as she ever has when she says “I don’t want to do this.” I think that it’s—I can’t answer it without not spoiling anything! This is impossible!
You’ve spoken about the show being relevant in the past. Does it feel more timely now than ever?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, how can it not? How could it not? I have my sort of personal feelings as a human and as a citizen that I think are very much in line with what the show is about, what we believe on the show, and the story that we’re telling in the show and the story that Margaret [Atwood] was telling with the book. But I also think that speaking on behalf of the show, the relevancy is something that we really wish wasn’t something that was a part of it in the sense that we wish it was a fantasy. We wish the show was a crazy, dystopian, “oh-my-God-this-could-never-happen here-this-is-crazy-thank-God-we-don’t-live-in-this-world show. And unfortunately, it’s not, and we don’t take any joy in that.
The forced birth stories are horrifying, but in the wake of Roe vs. Wade being overturned, do those scenes hit differently for you watching them now?
Of course. Bodily autonomy and reproductive rights and women’s rights and equal rights have always been things that have been important to me and so important to so many people on the show. I can only speak for myself, but yeah, of course. But I’ve also had that experience so many times on the show where we’ve been shooting an episode and something will happen in the news. And then you’ll go and shoot a scene that day that hits right where it hurts, you know, and I can’t—it’s hard to talk without spoiling things, but the end of the season is very, very relevant with something else that was going on in the news this year and still is, and a lot of the research I did as a director was researching things that had happened two weeks prior, and that was just a very moving and difficult thing to be looking at things online that were so present in my world today. If that makes sense. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Season 5 of The Handmaid’s Tale premieres Sept. 14, 2022, on Hulu. Next, find out abortion rights by state following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
