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May the Lord open...a new Gilead up north. That's Alanis Wheeler's hope, at least.
When the fifth season of The Handmaid's Tale drops on Hulu on September 14, there'll be a terrifying new woman in teal to contend with: Alanis Wheeler, a Toronto citizen who idolizes Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) and all she did to create the totalitarian regime of Gilead in the United States. For viewers, one would hope, that makes her a bad guy. For the actress who plays her, Genevieve Angelson, it's not that simple.
"Instead of playing a villain on a very dark TV show," Angelson told Newsweek, "I decided that I was going to play a grown-up in a world full of characters [like the rebels] who were wildly out of touch with the severity of the circumstances at hand."
Fans of the award-winning series, created by Bruce Miller, and its source material, Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel, know those circumstances to be the impending extinction of the human race due to widespread infertility. In the face of that possibility, a community of religious zealots—commanders and their wives—constructed a society in which rape, slavery and kidnapping are all considered righteous means to a glorious end: more babies to populate the earth.
"Instead of saying, 'I'm someone who identifies with women having no rights and rape being OK,' which for me is not possible to do as a human being, I had to say, 'I don't love this and I didn't choose this. I am my own hero because I'm willing to make hard decisions,'" Angelson said. "That is the way I was able to offer compassion to what could so easily be two-dimensional."
In the world of The Handmaid's Tale, Canada has long been the lone beacon of hope, the place right across the border where refugees of Gilead, including title character June (executive producer Elisabeth Moss) can start to heal from the trauma of their experience (or channel their rage into revenge) and fight to take down Gilead.
With a new regime potentially cropping up in Toronto, the fifth season destabilizes the notion that anywhere is safe from tyranny. And with Serena's husband, Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), dead on the wall at the hands of the handmaids, it's possible that the timing might just be perfect for Serena to find a new ally.
It was announced this year that series regular Alexis Bledel (Emily) would not be returning to the show. In addition to Moss and Strahovski, Bradley Whitford (Commander Lawrence), who, per Angelson, will also direct; Ann Dowd (Lydia Clements); O.T. Fagbenle (Luke Bankole); and Samira Wiley (Moira Strand) will be back.
For Angelson, who in the past year has also appeared on This Is Us, New Amsterdam and The Afterparty, the experience of joining a beloved Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning show in its fifth season was a delicate affair.
"You walk in with total respect for the machine," she said. "This is one of the most successful, respected shows on TV. It needs me to melt into it seamlessly."
Most of her scenes are with Strahovski, who plays her character's idol.
"She is an incredible actress, so it was very effortless for me to sort of go in, on camera, playing someone who is a deep admirer of hers, to off camera, saying, 'I have to tell you I absolutely f**king loved you in Golden Boy on Broadway."
