The Handmaid's Tale's Elisabeth Moss Takes Us Inside Directing The Series Finale: Ending Show Without That Big Character Return 'Didn't Feel Right'
This post contains spoilers from The Handmaid's Tale's series finale. Proceed accordingly.
The idea to have Alexis Bledel return as Emily for The Handmaid's Tale series finale may not have originated with series star Elisabeth Moss, but it found its biggest cheerleader in her.
"When I heard it, I did say, 'Well now that you've told me about this possibility, you do realize that we're now going to have to do it,'" she recalls, laughing. "Like, 'I'm not going to be able to go back from this idea, so we're now committed.'"
If you've watched the show's final hour, you know: Bledel, who exited the show between Seasons 4 and 5, showed up in the finale when Emily appeared in Boston. We learned that the character had been posing as a martha, continuing her Mayday work to bring down Gilead, and that she was still in contact with her wife and son. After talking with Emily, June realized that she needed to continue her mission, as well: to keep working with Mark Tuello and Mayday to topple Gilead. (Read a full finale recap here.)
Moss, who in addition to starring in and executive-producing the Hulu series also directed its final two episodes, took a few minutes to chat with TVLine about a bunch of things, including what it took to bring the dystopian story to a resting place she felt good about.
"I would never, ever, ever in a million years have stopped unless I had felt that we had the ending that we wanted," she says. Read on to hear her thoughts on helming the last two episodes — including what went wrong during Serena and June's big farewell. (And have you heard what she told us about Taylor Swift in Episode 9?)
TVLINE | Before we get to the series finale Was the train-station scene in the Season 5 finale or the aborted mass hanging/invasion of Gilead in Episode 9 tougher to wrap your hands around as a director?
ELISABETH MOSS | Well, they have their own challenges. I think that both we intended to do with not a lot of crowd-replacement. So there was definitely some crowd-replacement, but we tried to do pretty minimal. So we would have 500 or so people when we were doing the train thing and then we had closer to 750 when we were doing the execution/revolution — whether you're a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty kind of person. [Laughs] I think the execution was harder because of the performance element for me. That edges it out a bit. It was just bigger, too. It was a bigger scene, it had more main characters, more regulars, more background like I said. There were a lot of VFX elements with the explosions and with gunshots and things like that, because we don't use actual gunshots, of course. So we were doing a lot of augmenting there. I guess it was [Season 6, Episode] 9. Yeah. But really, it was because of the performance element for me.
TVLINE | I want to talk to you about having Alexis Bledel back on set, because that is such a special moment.
Yeah!
TVLINE | Give me the genesis of getting her to come back. And what was the vibe when you were both in a scene together again?
That was definitely all Bruce [Miller, executive producer] and the writers coming up with the idea to have her back... I've got to say: It was a very easy process, though. She was extremely game, right away, and very enthusiastic about it, which was so exciting for us. We missed her so much over the past few years, and it didn't feel right, ending the show without having that character come back. On a more objective level, it allowed us to tell the story that we needed to tell in the finale. Because it was really important that June spend the first half of the episode letting go of her past so that she, in the second half of the episode, could move into her future. You can't have her let go of that without having that moment with Emily, who is that time period for her, you know? She's such a huge part of it. And also the opportunity to have Emily talk about [her son] Oliver and how she's having a relationship with Oliver and how she's able to see him or able to talk to him is really important in order to help June get to the place where she could decide that she was going to keep trying to get Hannah out.
TVLINE | That conversation, to me, felt very much like the catalyst for that. Do you think she would've been able to come to that decision at that point without talking to Emily about it?
No, definitely not. Absolutely not. Seeing someone that she truly respects so much, because Emily I think she respects as a mother, as a friend, as a woman but also as a resistance fighter. Emily was the OG. Emily was the first one. She was the first handmaid that June ever saw be a part of Mayday. That was it for her. So to see this woman that she really looks up to so much be able to somehow balance being a mom, too, was — I don't think she could've gotten... No, I don't. I don't think she could've gotten to the place she needed to.
TVLINE| Let's talk about the scene where June forgives Serena, which felt to me like such an inverse of the scene in Episode 6 where Serena wonders why June can't forgive her, and June says she wishes she could. Take us inside that.
OK. So, that was one of the hardest scenes to shoot, practically, because we had incredible weather challenges that day. So her side was like snowing, and then my side was blue sky. And not a f–king, like, ounce of condensation in the air. So it was one of those where you just kind of take a deep breath and go, "OK! Well, we're not going to stop shooting the scene, because we don't have that kind of schedule. We don't have that kind of budget. So we are going to carry on, and somehow, this is going to work." That's me as a director. And me as an actor is like, "I'm just going to have to continue to give the right performance while stopping and starting because now we have a snow machine on that sometimes is blowing and sometimes not, and sometimes it's blowing too much, and now there's snow on my head." It was so not as kind of poetic as you see on the screen. [Laughs]
So that's my memory of the scene. Honestly, that's kind of how it actually went down. But I do remember after Yvonne's side — thank God she went first — I remember being like, "Well, that's the scene." It's her scene. She's so beautiful in the scene, [Sighs] and I knew that we had it, based on her performance. And it was just a matter of me clocking my side and responding to her performance on my side. But I knew that we had it because we had her side.
TVLINE | We get to the final scene, and it's a real full-circle moment for June back at the Waterford house. I'm wondering if you all felt any added pressure, given that you're also leading into a sequel series [Hulu's The Testaments].
Pressure in what way?
TVLINE | Mainly in terms of landing the plane in a way that is satisfying to the audience but also sets up another story.
Oh yeah. I feel like if you think about it that way, it's going to be impossible to do what you need to do. The pressure that we felt was from ourselves and our own integrity to ourselves. Like, to find an ending and shoot that ending and edit that ending in a way that we all felt was deserving of this incredible thing that so many departments had created. So I think the pressure came from ourselves, our own personal goals. I would never, ever, ever in a million years have stopped unless I had felt that we had the ending that we wanted. [Laughs] I think you could go to any single person on that crew and they would say the same thing. I am not one to rest if I don't feel like it's right or if I don't feel good about something. I'm not going to lie: We explored different ideas. We explored different things. And nothing except what we have felt right. Everything felt like, "Oh, this is going to feel too convenient" or "That just feels like we're tying something up in a bow" or it feels like fan fiction or we're trying to placate the audience. The ending that we have is the only one that felt right. I remember shooting the final scene... and just thinking, "That's how this series ends." So that alleviated that pressure. That was like, "OK, good. We're happy with what it is and that's all we really wanted."
TVLINE | So what I'm hearing you say is: You scrapped the ending where Nick came in via parachute and said, "I got out of the plane in time! I had a change of heart!"
We scrapped the ending where June winds up in Hawaii with Luke and Nick, raising all of their children together. That's the ending we scrapped. [Laughs]