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As an Adoptive Mom, I Have Complicated Feelings About The Handmaid's Tale


My daughter is the best thing to happen to me. Six years later, I’m convinced she’s the reason I went through all the rest: because I was always meant to be her mother. But our once-very open adoption has dwindled over the years, mostly because her other mama has pulled away from us. I think it’s been hard for her, watching another woman raise her child. Even though this is what she chose—even though this baby was never stolen from her like they are in Gilead—I think the pain of being separated from the child she grew and loved has slowly made seeing us something she’d rather avoid. That pain she feels juxtaposed against the joy I experience with motherhood is a dichotomy I have trouble facing.

This most recent season of The Handmaid’s Tale has brought up these gut-check moments even more. That’s not just because of Serena: We’ve also been given insight into Mrs. Mackenzie (Amy Landecker), the woman raising June’s other daughter, Hannah. We don’t know much about Mrs. Mackenzie, just that she’s also a Commander’s wife who was given Hannah after June became a Handmaid. The interaction in the season three premiere between Mrs. Mackenzie and June, who both clearly love Hannah, gutted me. Mrs. Mackenzie said things I could picture myself saying (or at least thinking).

“This has to stop,” she says to June, speaking of her continued efforts to see Hannah. “You brought our child into the world. The Commander and I bless you for that. God knows.”

“I’m her mother,” Mrs. Mackenzie continues. When June flinches at that, Mrs. Mackenzie takes a breath and says, “You’re being cruel, confusing her like this.” “I’m confusing her?” June challenges.

It’s a poignant moment: both women standing their ground. Both clearly believing they are the ones doing right by this child. And while as the audience, we can see that June is the one who’s right, I could still see myself in Mrs. Mackenzie.

It made me wonder: When it comes to my daughter’s adoption, am I the one who knows what’s best?

June in The Handmaid’s Tale.

George Kraychyk/Hulu

I think so. I believe so. And watching that interaction on The Handmaid’s Tale, I also believe Mrs. Mackenzie thinks the same. There’s this moment, after the two women find common ground in sharing what they know about Hannah, where June concedes. “I appreciate the home you’ve made for her,” she tells Mrs. Mackenzie. Because it is a good home. Because her little girl is clearly loved. Because it could be so much worse. My daughter’s other mother has said the same to me more than once.



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Kylie Jenner Reportedly Hosted a Handmaid's Tale-Themed Birthday Party for a Friend


To some, the novel and Hulu show The Handmaid’s Tale is a searing study of gender, power, and politics in a dystopian society. To Kylie Jenner, it’s the perfect inspiration for a birthday party theme. Wait, what?

Hollywood Life reports that Kylie Jenner celebrated a friend’s birthday (Anastasia Karanikolaou, who turned 22) by throwing her a Handmaid’s Tale-themed party. On Saturday, she and guests posted several photos from inside a gathering where they watched the show’s season three premiere dressed up like its titular handmaids in red robes.

If you’re not familiar with the source material, The Handmaid’s Tale TV series is based off of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 bestselling novel, in which women preserve the nuclear family (man marries woman; they have babies; lather, rinse, repeat) through government-mandated abuse. While the show ventures beyond the end of the novel for further seasons in its fictional nation, Gilead, it doesn’t leave out the terror its characters experience while they’re forced to conceive and carry children (among other things).

This party made Gilead look less futuristic hellscape and more Bachelorette rose ceremony: Guests entered the party through an entryway lined with curtains. They were greeted by staff dressed in servants’ uniforms and repeating an oft-quoted phrase from the show: “Praise be.” Inside the party, each guest received a red handmaid’s robe, a white bonnet, and roses. Red roses also decorated the dinner table, and there were also floor-to-ceiling posters bearing Gilead’s insignia.

A guest enters the party. To the right, you can see the greeters.

Instagram @sofiarichie



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How the Trumps Inspired 'The Handmaid's Tale' Costumes in Season 3


The room is full of suits and ties waiting at attention. The Aunts surround the left wall. The floor in the back is covered in boots ready to march. But all you see is red. There, in the center, 250 Handmaids’ gowns hang limp, lifeless in a row; rustling only when the breeze of someone rushing over to the Marthas whisks by. There’s only one exit, and between you and it lies Melania Trump.

With how much The Handmaid’s Tale—Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel—blurs with the political landscape of 2019, this scene doesn’t sound like it’d be out of place in the show’s third season, which premieres today, June 5. The wives of Gilead in many ways resemble what Melania and Ivanka Trump have come to represent: women who uphold a ruthless patriarchal society, yet are oppressed by it at the same time. (In other words, the 52 percent.)

But in reality, I’m standing in the middle of the show’s gigantic storage closet at its set in Toronto. It’s mid-April, and the costume department just got through one of its heaviest design sprints: hundreds of Handmaids’ dresses, 54 Wives’ gowns, and a handful of sharply tailored teal blue looks for Serena Joy Waterford, the Commander’s formidable wife. And still, the designers have work to do. Today, they’re sewing outfits for the Jezebels. Then it’s back to focusing on Serena’s closet. (As for Melania, we’ll get to her soon.)

“Serena is my favorite to design for,” Natalie Bronfman, the show’s lead costume designer, says as she points to a wall in her office covered in sketches of blue gowns. “I take a lot of elements from the late fifties and early sixties as inspiration. The real clean, shaped stuff. Then I mix them in teal.”

It’s not just the box-pleats or angular necklines that makes designing for Serena a costumer’s dream. It’s her complexities—like tormenting a postpartum June for running away and giving birth in an abandoned country home; then turning around to set June and baby Nicole free from her womanizing husband and Gilead’s archaic rules.

“Costume says so much,” Bronfman says. “It tells where you’re from, what your economic status is, what your mental status is. That’s all there in how and what you wear. People tend to write it off as ‘just clothes’—but it’s not, actually.”

Serena’s pivotal moment in the season two finale, where she gives away baby Nicole.

George Kraychyk/Hulu

Season two had plenty moments that made you think maybe Serena isn’t the monster we thought she was, only to turn right around and confirm that, yeah, she really is the worst. (Well, maybe next to Aunt Lydia.) Season 3 delivers even more of that “Will she? Won’t she?” pit-in-your-stomach anxiety—and, without giving away any spoilers, her mental state is often reflected in her clothes.

But wait, let’s back up: You’re probably curious about what the hell Melania was doing in the costume department? I was too. In fact, I was shocked when I saw images of the Trump family hanging up in a few different places around the room. (Unfortunately I can’t share pictures of these mood boards, due to spoilers.)

“Oh, that?” Bronfman laughs when I point out the photo of Melania hanging on the exit door. It’s that now almost too apt meme of the First Lady walking down a hall of the White House’s dystopian red Christmas trees. On top of each one sits a crisp white, photoshopped bonnet.

“That was right at Christmas and somebody sent it to us, so we put it up because we were in the midst of building all of these Handmaids’ dresses,” she says, gesturing to the 250 capes in front of us.



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'The Handmaid's Tale' Season 3: Everything We Know So Far


Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Season two of The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu ended with a major cliffhanger: June (Elisabeth Moss) opted to stay behind in Gilead to rescue her daughter, Hannah, even though she had a clear way to escape. It was a jaw-dropping moment, and now her battle with the country’s higher-ups is on the horizon.

Season three of The Handmaid’s Tale will undoubtedly feature the same urgent, politically charged narratives that made the first two chapters such a success—but how much do we know about what’s to come? Well, not much right now. However, the tidbits below should keep you hooked until June returns to smash the patriarchy.

Read on to learn more about The Handmaid’s Tale season three. Of course, we’ll update this post as more details come in.

1. The release date. This hasn’t officially been announced yet, but if past seasons are any indication, we should get new episodes by the end of spring. Season one of The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in April 2017, and the second season debuted roughly one year later. In May 2018 Elisabeth Moss posted to Instagram about shooting the third season.

2. June’s fight will be a central story. “She’s ready to rise up, and ready to take some chances and use all the skills she’s learned over the last three years,” showrunner Bruce Miller told The Hollywood Reporter.

3. Christopher Meloni and Elizabeth Reaser will appear as guest stars. You probably know Meloni as Detective Stabler from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Reaser from The Haunting of Hill House. On The Handmaid’s Tale, though, Meloni will play Commander Winslow, “a powerful and magnetic commander who hosts the Waterfords on an important trip,” according to Hulu. Reaser plays his wife, who “becomes a friend and inspiration to Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski).”

4. We’ll also see Emily (Alexis Bledel) and baby Nicole’s escape from Gilead. That’s where we left off in season two, after all. “There’s a lot of people who want her, including the whole country of Gilead—if she happens to get out,” Miller told CNN. “She’s the next generation that they’re all doing all of this for.”

5. Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) is alive. She survives Emily’s knife attack, and the incident, according to producer Warren Littlefield, “transformed” her.

6. It will stay true to Margaret Atwood’s source material. “People talk about how we’re beyond the book, but we’re not really,” Miller told The Hollywood Reporter. “The book starts, then jumps 200 years with an academic discussion at the end of it, about what’s happened in those intervening 200 years. It’s maybe handled in an outline, but it’s still there in Margaret’s novel. We’re not going beyond the novel; we’re just covering territory she covered quickly, a bit more slowly.”

7. Commander Lawrence is returning. Known as the “architect of Gilead’s economy,” Commander Lawrence was one of the most erratic new characters from season two. He’ll be back. “You never know what he’s willing to do and what he’s not willing to do,” Miller told CNN.

8. And so is Rita (Amanda Brugel). She was instrumental in helping June almost escape from Gilead. “At the end of season two, I know where she’s going,” Brugel told Vulture about her character. “Now I have her voice, so I’m ready to use it.”

9. It looks like June is now a Martha. Hulu released a short clip—ahead of a longer trailer that aired during the Super Bowl—that shows June walking down the street in the more drab grey/green uniform worn by Marthas in Gilead, as opposed to her red handmaid cloak and bonnet. The reason for the apparent shift in status is not yet known.

10. Morning’s over, America. Hulu took its latest trailer to one of America’s biggest stages: the Super Bowl. What started as a serene-sounding voiceover stating, “It’s morning again in America” took a turn for the worse as the voice described more women than ever heading to work, over shots of the enslaved women of Gilead. Next came mention of “dozens of babies being born to happy, healthy families”—and we all know that happens. As the voiceover becomes more warped and the images more horrifying, June arrives to say, “Wake up, America. Morning’s over.” Could a revolution be starting soon?

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Christopher Rosa is an entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisrosa92.





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Margaret Atwood Is Writing a Sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale'


It’s been more than 30 years since Canadian author Margaret Atwood published her revolutionary sci-fi novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Since its release, the book has become a symbol of female resistance, thanks in part to its wildly popular Hulu adaptation—and now Atwood has revealed that she’s going to take the story further by writing a sequel called The Testaments.

In a press release, Atwood shared that The Testaments will be out in September 2019. It will pick up 15 years after the final scene in the original book and will be told from the perspective of three women. Like the television series, The Handmaid’s Tale novel is set in Gilead, a dystopian world in which fertile women (called handmaids) are forced to bear children for wealthier families. Both the show and the book follow Offred, a handmaid who is assigned to a rich couple, and her story in the novel ends ambiguously. Atwood’s sequel could finally offer a glimpse into what became of the character.

“Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything!” Atwood writes in the release. “The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”

Atwood has previously shared that she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale while living in West Berlin and that she drew inspiration from examples of women’s struggles throughout history.

“It may look like only a year, but the real answer is 4,000 years because that’s how much of women’s history I was drawing on,” she said in a speech last year.

Although the Hulu adaptation has boosted The Handmaid’s Tale popularity, Atwood’s publisher has said the show will not be connected to the new book. Still, the series starring Elisabeth Moss has brought the world of Gilead to new audiences and has inspired women amid the #MeToo era and the Trump administration. Many women have taken to wearing the red robes from the series during reproductive rights demonstrations, and some even wore the costume to protest the confirmation of controversial Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.



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'Saturday Night Live' Graced Us With a Mashup of 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Sex and the City'—and, Well, Praise Be


Last night, comedian Amy Schumer made a highly anticipated return to the Saturday Night Live stage to reprise her role as show host and star in a skit that’s essentially a mashup of two incredible—and very, very, different—shows we know and love. Behold, “Handmaids in the City,” a sketch that, however implausibly but undoubtedly successfully, combines Sex and the City and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Positioned as a new, faux-Hulu series, “Handmaids in the City” takes shape as a downright brilliant spoof on modern American television under the current political administration.

“Let’s face it ladies, in 2018, The Handmaid’s Tale is basically our Sex and the City,” the faux-show trailer begins. “So whether you’re on Offred, or an Ofwarren, you’ll love Hulu’s new spinoff show, Handmaids in the City.”

Playing on the internal monologues that guide both The Handmaid’s Tale and Sex and the City, the sketch starts with Offred (played by Schumer) pondering her fate as a female in this new dystopian society—but with a Carrie Bradshaw twist: “As I waited for the girls in downtown Gilead, I was feeling like an uptown gal-ead, and I couldn’t help but wonder: ‘Are women allowed to do anything anymore?'”

From there, Offred is joined by three other handmaids who laughingly discuss the bleak state-of-affairs that is their new subservient lifestyle. When asked how she’s liking her new home, Ofjohn (Aidy Bryant) replies, “Amazing! It’s rent controlled—John controls me, and I don’t pay rent!”)

Ultimately, the tongue-in-cheek spoof led by Schumer plays out perfectly, becoming equal parts a hilarious sketch and all-too-real social commentary on the gloomy-feeling state of affairs for women in American society. As the faux-commercial concludes: “Handmaids in the City. If you’re not traumatized, you’re not watching TV.”

Praise be.

Watch the sketch here:

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