20 Behind-the-Scenes Facts About 'The Handmaid's Tale' (Because Season 5 is Coming!)
![20 Behind-the-Scenes Facts About 'The Handmaid's Tale' (Because Season 5 is Coming!)](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/1/5/859815_320x180.jpg)
We’re really excited about Season 5 of The Handmaid’s Tale getting closer and closer, mainly because it is noise that drowns out The Bad Thoughts. But another major reason for our excitement is that it’s smart noise, so the thought, “why are you wasting your time with this trash?” never even occurs to us. Now, the thought “yeah, no, a theocratic fascist America would be super racist” does pop in our head, and a lot, but perhaps The Handmaid’s Tale is already depressing enough for that level of realness, so we can just ignore it. You know, suspension of disbelief and stuff.
What we’re trying to say is that The Handmaid’s Tale is a brilliant, complex, and beautiful drama. Besides some awkward girls-get-it-done scenes of fierce strutting and empowering pop music here and there (and, well, awful merch), the show has mostly hit the spot in terms of suspense, action, great character work, elegantly-written dialogue, and the mature, nuanced storytelling its concept deserves. It’s an achievement in every sense, the sort of high quality TV that our inner 15-year-old sci-fi readers could only dream about seeing (at a time we definitely didn’t have the depth to get the novel’s actual ideas). Thus, having already discussed some awesome facts about the Hulu show, we now add some lesser known facts about The Handmaid’s Tale: the show, its performers, its production, and its literary inspiration.
The Movie
![The Handmaid's Tale There was an awful movie in 1990. The script is a disjointed mess, but its main problem is lacking a voice-over narration. Instead of following Offred, we're just seeing her in the trashy style of the erotic thrillers of the time, which is just wrong. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/7/859827.jpg)
Source: Girl Behind The Counter/YouTube
Original Title
![The Handmaid's Tale The novel's original title was Offred. Margaret Atwood changed it 150 pages in, in an allusion to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. We would've called it The Official Platform of the Republican Party, but Atwood is a much better writer. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/5/859825.jpg)
Source: Literary Hub
Feminism
![The Handmaid's Tale The novel was not intended as a feminist work. As Margaret Atwood said in 1986, Novels are not slogans. a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the people who are living within that kind of regime. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/1/9/859819.jpg)
Source: The New York Times
Cold War
![The Handmaid's Tale The book is a product of the Cold War. Atwood wrote the novel in Berlin, close to the infamous Wall, and was influenced by the oppressive atmosphere she felt while visiting countries behind the Iron Curtain. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/5/859835.jpg)
Source: CBC
Real History
![The Handmaid's Tale It's scary because it's all real. Yes, The Handmaid's Tale is itself fiction-but while writing it, Margaret Atwood made a point of not including any atrocity that didn't historically happen somewhere. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, she wrote in 2012. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/4/859834.jpg)
Sources: The Guardian
Daniel Wilson
![The Handmaid's Tale Daniel Wilson is a little-discussed but important name. Wilson doesn't have a long list of credits, but he's a producer of both the show and the mediocre 1990 movie. Are we saying he stepped up his game after realizing his previous adaptation sucked? Yes, we are. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/6/859836.jpg)
Art Theft
![The Handmaid's Tale The Waterfords are art thieves. The paintings at the Waterfords' home are not supposed to be reproductions. The production design team works assuming that they stole the originals from the Boston museum of Modern Art (during the chaos after the collapse of old America, we presume). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/7/859837.jpg)
Sources: W Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Mental Floss
Season 2's Ending
![The Handmaid's Tale Season 2's ending divided the writers. According to show creator Bruce Miller, they argued about the ending for four months, because some writers wanted June to escape Gilead. The final decision was to give her a more active role by having her choose to stay and find her daughter. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/2/859832.jpg)
Source: Us Magazine
Ten Seasons
![The Handmaid's Tale Bruce Miller wants ten seasons. If you hit a home run, you want energy to go around the bases, you want enough story to keep going, he has said, if you can hook the audience to care about these people enough that they're actually crying at the finale. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/3/859833.jpg)
Source: The New York Times
Not Science Fiction
![The Handmaid's Tale It's not sci-fi, according to its author. Margaret Atwood insists on calling it speculative fiction, in the sense that it speculates around the possibility of forms of persecution, surveillance, and punishment. Also, just look around. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/1/859831.jpg)
Sources: CBC, Harper's Bazaar
Scarlet Letter
![The Handmaid's Tale The Scarlet Letter is a major influence. Some of Atwood's influences were dystopian classics like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, but Hawthorne's 1850 novel is a more direct precursor. According to her, The roots of totalitarianism in America are found... in the theocracy of the 17th Century. The Scarlet Letter is not that far behind The Handmaid's Tale. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/3/0/859830.jpg)
Source: Harper's Bazaar
Amanda Brugel's Thesis
![CRACKED.COM The Handmaid's Tale Amanda Brugel was an expert on her character long before playing it Brugel read Atwood's novel at 15 and eventually wrote her undergraduate thesis about Rita, the very same character she ended up portraying in the show.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/9/859829.jpg)
Source: OK! Magazine/YouTube
Pandemic Delay
![The Handmaid's Tale The COVID-19 pandemic delayed Season 4. The season was supposed to come out in 2020, but it premiered in 2021 because we're living in our own imagination-defying dystopia (which is definitely not critically acclaimed). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/8/859828.jpg)
Source: Deadline
Opera
![The Handmaid's Tale There is a Handmaid's Tale opera. There were other versions before Hulu's show: A few audiobooks (with major contributions by Homeland's Claire Danes), radio adaptations, and stage, ballet, and even opera versions. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/3/859823.jpg)
Sources: Mental Floss, Wikipedia, The New York Times
The Show's Music
![The Handmaid's Tale Elisabeth Moss contributes to the music. While Moss doesn't give composer Adam Taylor any suggestions, she does write him long emails about her character's thoughts and feelings in certain scenes, which Taylor uses as reference for his work. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/6/859826.jpg)
Source: Insider
Aunt Lydia Spin-Off
![The Handmaid's Tale A spin-off focusing on Aunt Lydia is coming. The new show, set 15 years after The Handmaid's Tale, began filming in 2019 (even before Atwood's sequel novel came out). Ann Dowd was so eager to do it that she said she'd hunt any other actress chosen for the part (which is just classic Aunt Lydia). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/4/859824.jpg)
Source: Decider
Dress Colors
![The Handmaid's Tale The dresses' colors have meanings. The handmaids' dresses are a deep red because that makes them easy to spot if they escape. It also represents the blood of giving birth, and it's a reference to Mary Magdalene. The wives wear blue to symbolize their purity, like the Virgin Mary. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/1/859821.jpg)
Source: Showbiz CheatSheet
Canada
![The Handmaid's Tale The show is filmed in Canada. Margaret Atwood chose to set the story in the U.S. because she thought a fascist theocracy would not take hold so easily in her native Canada - which makes it kind of ironic that the show is shot around Toronto and Ontario. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/1/8/859818.jpg)
Source: Insider
Alexis Bledel
![CRACKED.COM The Handmaid's Tale Alexis Bledel is not returning. Bledel's character Emily was introduced in Season 1, became a regular from Season 2 onwards, and netted her an Emmy nomination. However, she won't be returning for Season 5.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/2/859822.jpg)
Source: Variety
Awards
![The Handmaid's Tale It has won a ton of awards. It was the first streaming show to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. It also has a Golden Globe Award for Best Drama, as well as Producers Guild of America Awards, Art Directors Guild Awards, and, like, more than we can mention. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/2/0/859820.jpg)
Source: Wikipedia