LOS ANGELES, Sept. 14 (UPI) — Ann Dowd said her character in The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5, premiering Wednesday on Hulu, attempts to correct her government’s abuses of women.
Dowd, 66, plays Aunt Lydia, a high-ranking officer in the oppressive nation of Gilead, which forces women to give birth to commanders’ children.
“She’s starting to see what’s in front of her,” Dowd told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. “She’s starting to drop the armor, to take the blinders off.”
Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a near future in which the Gilead regime has taken over the United States. The fertility rate declined, so commanders capture fertile women and force them to be handmaids.
Lydia has supported impregnation ceremonies and punishments for women who resisted because she believes it is God’s will that women give birth to Gilead children.
After four seasons, Dowd said Lydia has grown close enough to Janine (Madeline Brewer) and other handmaids that she is having trouble sanctioning the abuse anymore.
“Once that change begins to happen, she’s not going back,” Dowd said. “Once those eyes are open, once that armor begins to drop, I don’t think there’s any going back.”
That does not transform Lydia into an empathetic hero, Dowd said. She still believes in impregnating handmaids for religious purposes, but begins to question the pleasure commanders derive from it.
“I think her relationship with God is hugely important to her,” Dowd said. “That’s her mission — to bring these girls to a better place, to a relationship with God.”
Dowd, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of Aunt Lydia, said years of Gilead ceremonies have opened Lydia’s eyes that commanders and their wives were turning a religious process into an opulent display of conspicuous consumption.
“She tolerates so much — even the wives with the ridiculous teal dresses, 52 of them per closet, and the ridiculous parties giving their kids extravagant gifts,” Dowd said. “I think what shocks her truly is the abuse by the commanders and the permission they gave themselves to rape the handmaids.”
Lydia brings some suggestions to modify impregnation ceremonies to Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford). He, however, was under no illusions about “the hypocrisy of these pious men” of Gilead, Whitford said.
“Open up your Twitter feed and you’ll see plenty of examples of pious men who need a little kink,” Whitford said.
Janine is left behind in Gilead with the latest group of handmaids. In Season 4, Janine escaped with June (Elisabeth Moss) and others into the northern territories, but Janine was recaptured to be reposted as a Gilead handmaid.
“I think it’s harder for her to be without her friends than anything else,” Brewer said. “Most of her anxiety really comes from the fact that she does not want to be posted again. She’d rather die.”
The cast of The Handmaid’s Tale was filming Season 5 in June when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision, which established federal protections for abortion. But Dowd said she couldn’t focus on real-world events while portraying Lydia on the show.
“As an actor and a human being, if I think about that, I’m going to get way off track in disbelief and anger at this absurdity,” Dowd said.
“But that’s easy for Lydia, because she would say there’s no place in this world for abortion, ever. Imagine taking the life of a baby, particularly in our society in Gilead, where the birth rate is dropping.”
Dowd said working on The Handmaid’s Tale is so exhausting she must leave her work behind when she comes home. Dowd said she also reminds herself that the show “is make-believe.”
Whitford said he was “horrified” by not only the overturning of Roe, but also by the banning of books around the country and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, which forbids teachers from addressing sexual identity or gender orientation in class.
“We have to go beyond making television shows about it and start making the political changes that we need to make to restore a little sanity and humanity in our country and the world,” Whitford said. “It’s a worldwide problem.”
Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller, who adapted Atwood’s book for the series, said the Supreme Court decisions drove home how timely the show is.
“There’s nothing fun about sitting around with smart people coming up with the worst things you can think of and then seeing them reflected in the real world,” Miller said. “At least I have some way to express myself or help or be part of the conversation.”
Executive producer Warren Littlefield echoed Miller’s sentiments that wished the struggle for women’s rights were only the subject of a fictional television show, not a real-life issue.
“We wish we were less relevant,” Littlefield said. “Sadly, that’s not the case. We remain perhaps more relevant than we’ve ever been, and so we’ll continue to try and tell a powerful human drama that the world keeps pointing to.”
New episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale premiere Wednesdays on Hulu.
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