Actress Elisabeth Moss bemoaned the Supreme Court leaked early draft of a majority opinion indicating the Roe v. Wade decision could likely be overturned, saying she wished her dystopian show “The Handmaid’s Tale” would “stop being so damn relevant.”
During the 39-year-old’s upcoming interview on Vanity Fair’s podcast the “Little Gold Men,” Moss talked about the reaction on the set in Canada to the leak, where the cast is filming the fifth season of the Hulu hit show.
The show is based on a feminist dystopian novel from author Margaret Atwood about a world, Gilead, where women are “forced to produce babies for infertile wealthy elites.” The handmaid costumes have become a staple of the pro-abortion rights movement and have been seen at Planned Parenthood rallies.
Elisabeth Moss opens up to @HWD about life on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ set after the leaked Supreme Court draft: “I wish it would stop being so damn relevant.” https://t.co/PXknh0ClWW
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) May 10, 2022
“It was a bit somber on set when we first started [after the leak], but you have to sort of get to work and do the day,” Moss shared. “It’s always a weird thing for us. It’s not a pleasant thing. It’s not something that gets us excited, when there are these parallels and when your character is used as an example of something that’s happening in real life. It’s not anything we take any pleasure in at all.”
“It does make us happy and proud that we are doing a show that we feel is relevant, that we’re doing a show that we feel says things that need to be said,” she added. “I wish it would stop being so damn relevant, though. I’ll tell you that much.”
“It does feel gratifying to be making something that you feel like is saying something that perhaps people should be listening to right now, but I also think that our relevancy is all due to Margaret Atwood,” Moss continued. “The book that she wrote in 1985, which was a while ago now, remains relevant and remains important. We owe a lot of that to her. She has talked about how history is cyclical and she has talked about how these things repeat themselves. And that’s very, very true.”
The “Mad Men” star’s comments follow similar ones from her co-star, actress Ann Dowd, who plays Aunt Lydia. However, she said it’s not the “writers’ intent to mirror what is going on, sadly, in the world and this country,” reported The Daily Beast.
“But it is to wake people up, keep the dialogue going, talk,” Dowd shared. “Don’t let the small things go by. You know, the line that I find so haunting from the first season is when Offred says, ‘When we finally put our phones down it was too late.'”