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The Handmaid’s Tale had just begun filming its fourth season last March, when production on the series was shut down for six months due to the pandemic. And when the first three episodes of Season 4 debut April 28 on Hulu, Covid-19’s effects will continue to reverberate in the drama.
“A ton of things had to be changed in the show,” showrunner and executive producer Bruce Miller said at the Television Critics Association’s virtual winter press tour Thursday. “Just the practical realities of producing and making the show on the ground were very, very difficult.”
When filming resumed last fall in Toronto with Covid-19 safety protocols in place, Mill said they “reduced the number of people in scenes. Sometimes we can have five people in front of a camera, sometimes we have 20 people in front of the camera, so we were constantly, the entire season, making adjustments to the script and to the story. … It was difficult to get our cast into Canada to shoot, so we had to keep people out of episodes simply because they didn’t have enough time in their schedule.”
Star and executive producer Elisabeth Moss, who took on directorial duties for the first time this season, counts the show’s cast and crew lucky that they were able to accomplish the storytelling they set out to do with rigorous testing protocols and other safety precautions on and off set.
“We were able to thankfully proceed with the performances as we would have wanted to, even if we were restricted in numbers at certain points,” Moss said. “If there were two people in a room, we were able to do what we wanted to do what we would have wanted to do anyway, which we were very grateful for.”
Moss directed three episodes in Season 4, a new role for her that she said was invigorating to try her hand at. And while she said “it’s not as big of a shift as you would think to take on that new position,” there were some things about her directorial duties that were unconventional.
“From the beginning to the end, from prep to shooting to post, Lizzie and I never spoke in the same room,” Miller said of Moss. “We spoke, but we were never face-to-face.”
The Handmaid’s Tale made history in 2017 as the first streaming series to win an Emmy for outstanding drama series, and has remained one of Hulu’s biggest shows. The dystopian drama has already been renewed for a fifth season and Hulu has optioned the rights to Margaret Atwood’s sequel novel, 2019’s The Testament, though producers aren’t sure if that storyline will be incorporated into The Handmaid’s Tale.
While the executive producers wouldn’t say how many seasons they would like to do, Miller said this season’s big swings “makes me think there’s a lot of life left in this story.”
He’s not alone.
“In this year of Covid, we attempted our most ambitious production year because we’re out there following this journey,” executive producer Warren Littlefield said. “If we can keep up that kind of level, then it excites me where we go from here.”
