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The Testaments is going to approach onscreen trauma very differently than predecessor The Handmaid’s Tale.
Creator Bruce Miller opened up about Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) past being explored in the spinoff, telling The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, April 8, “We were very mindful of the fact that we are only showing a few peeks into her past, and what to show in those.”
Miller specifically highlighted how “very mindful about the level of trauma” they wanted “to put the audience through.”
“So when looking at the material in The Testaments, we wanted to make sure [the flashbacks] lined up with our goal of understanding Lydia’s mindset at the beginning of Gilead and why she made the choices she did,” he continued.
Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale took place in a dystopian future where low fertility rates led women to be assigned to men for bearing children. The series aired from 2017 to 2025.
The Testaments, which airs Wednesdays, is set four years later. Dowd’s Aunt Lydia serves as the narrator as viewers are thrust back into the dystopian future. Agnes and Daisy pose as “Pearl Girls” to infiltrate Canada in an attempt to smuggle incriminating information about Gilead’s regime, while Aunt Lydia acts as a covert source within Gilead.
In addition to Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday and Dowd, The Testaments stars Eva Foote, Rowan Blanchard, Kira Guloien, Amy Seimetz and Brad Alexander. Birva Pandya, Zarrin Darnell-Martin, Mattea Conforti, Shechinah Mpumlwana, Mabel Li and Isolde Ardies make up the rest of the cast.
“Because this show is [told] from several young people’s perspective, I really hope that there is an element of people being taken aback, maybe in a way that the Handmaids didn’t,” Halliday told THR. “These children and these teenagers are the same [age as the] people who are going to be the ones who have to grow up and deal with the consequences that the current society is placing upon them. So, in a way, I hope that seeing a younger generation will offer people a different perspective and make them think more about the world that they’re creating on the outside.”
Infiniti also weighed in on the important topics at the center of the series.
“More than anything, I want the show to be viewed as a cautionary tale, because there are things that happen in the show and things that are happening in real life that are not far off from each other,” she said. “In my hopes and dreams, I really would hope that this would wake people up to how scary [those changes] can be. There is strength in numbers and strength in unity, and I would love for people to take that from the show and use it towards real life, because the thing that is often lacking from the world is unity.”
The Testaments airs Wednesdays on Hulu.
