“By no means in my wildest goals did I think about how significant it will grow to be to so many individuals, globally, and the legacy that it will go away behind,” stated Yvonne Strahovski, who performs Serena Pleasure Waterford in “The Handmaid’s Story,” throughout a latest interview with IndieWire.
As she prepares for the ultimate season of the Hulu sequence to premiere this week, the Australian actress is taking inventory of Serena’s journey throughout six seasons. Whereas Serena may simply have emerged as a one-note villain, from the start of her tenure on the sequence, Strahovski has imbued Serena with a soulfulness that usually places the viewers uncomfortably on her aspect, regardless of her reprehensible actions.
When the sequence adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel first landed on the small display in early 2017, it was hailed as the primary nice present of the Trump period. Eight years, six seasons, a pandemic, the twin writers and actors strikes of 2023, and two presidents later, “The Handmaid’s Story” bookends itself by dropping just some months after President Trump’s second inauguration.
The extra issues change, the extra they keep the identical…
Strahovski tries to not let the skin noise have an effect on her portrayal of Serena Pleasure, widow of Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and former mistress to protagonist June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss, whose character way back glided by the title “Offred” when the Waterfords ritualistically raped her as a mandate of the spiritual totalitarian state Gilead that the couple helped result in). Nonetheless, she sees the affect. “It’s actually cool to be part of one thing that isn’t simply leisure; it’s a degree of debate for therefore many individuals for therefore many causes,” Strahovski stated.
After defying Gilead by studying a Bible verse aloud and getting her finger amputated as punishment in Season 2 (ladies aren’t permitted to learn in Gilead, regardless of Serena herself penning a few of the conservative feminist texts that Gilead was based on) and discovering herself pregnant and widowed when June and her fellow handmaids beat Commander Waterford to dying on the cathartic fruits of Season 4, Serena finds herself on a redemption tour of kinds this season. She’s one of many first wives to present start to a wholesome child and, thus, she’s beginning to see a brand new method ahead for Gilead, within the type of the enclave of New Bethlehem, the place ladies can learn, have jobs, and even put on pants.
“The last word query with this character this season is, will she or received’t she redeem herself, and is it going to be that black and white? It by no means is,” stated Strahovski, positioning Season 6 as maybe her favourite one. In a brand new trailer for the season, we see Serena strolling down the aisle in a marriage costume, so she’s nonetheless looking for refuge within the establishment of marriage — looks like New Bethlehem can’t be that completely different from Gilead.
Regardless of Serena’s reliance on males, for higher or worse, it’s her connection to June that has been the driving drive of “The Handmaid’s Story.” After we final left them at Season 5’s conclusion (all the way in which again in 2022), June and Serena discovered themselves on both ends of a prepare carriage heading to Vancouver, their infants in tow: Serena’s new child Noah and June’s daughter Nichole (who Serena beforehand tried to steal).
Strahovski recalled a latest panel she and the forged have been on, throughout which the moderator confirmed early clips from the present, together with the Season 1 scene by which Serena performed with June’s older daughter Hannah, who was taken by Gilead and stays there (a driving issue for June’s continued return to the nation that brutalized her and her associates). June was pressured to look at from afar whereas trapped within the Waterfords’ automobile. This stunt illustrated to June that, if she stepped out of line, Hannah could be in much more hazard than she already was, rising up in Gilead.
“It was so onerous to look at that [again], and it threw me again into that second of remembering, I don’t need to be this individual!,” stated Strahovski. “It was simply horrendous. It was actually onerous to grapple with that scene and being on that aspect of the scene when actually I simply needed to bawl my eyes out for June and what she was going via.”
One of many hallmarks of “The Handmaid’s Story” is the energy of its actors to painting such reprehensible characters with such compassion and empathy, Strahovski specifically. “It’s been onerous to place apart your empathy for the opposite characters, primarily June, and simply attempt to lean right into a no-judgment house with Serena and attempt to get to [the place of] the place her coronary heart is, with out the judgment,” she stated.
That would be the final take a look at of this closing season: Can “The Handmaid’s Story” present a satisfying conclusion for June, Moira (Samira Wiley), Janine (Madeline Brewer), and all of the folks wronged by Gilead? And what of these complicit in its creation and continuation?
Will they — together with Serena — obtain their comeuppance, nevertheless remorseful they may be? Or is there a method ahead for Serena that restores justice to June and others she’s harmed whereas acknowledging that she’s tried to alter her methods? We’ll need to see, however Strahovski’s layered efficiency ensures we’ll have a lot to look at.
Hulu will premiere the primary three episodes of “The Handmaid’s Story” Season 6 on Tuesday, April 8. New episodes will likely be launched weekly.