[This story contains spoilers from season six, episode five of The Handmaid’s Tale, “Janine.”]
Samira Wiley‘s Moira has been put through immeasurable trauma on The Handmaid’s Tale. So has her onscreen best friend June, played by Elisabeth Moss. In the fifth episode of the final season, the Gilead survivors and best friends agree to not compare their suffering.
“You were raped and so was I. You were beaten and so was I. You were tortured and so was I. The point is, none of that should have happened to either of us,” says Wiley’s Moira to her friend June, who agrees, “if we start comparing our suffering, then those fuckers win.”
The powerful scene comes as the pair go undercover as Marthas (the servants in the Gilead caste system) after sneaking into and staking out Jezebel’s (the sex club for Commanders where women are forced to entertain them as sex workers) to plot an attack-and-rescue mission for the resistance group called Mayday. One of the women they are hoping to save is their friend and fellow former handmaid Janine (Madeline Brewer), and another highly anticipated final season reunion comes when the three women set eyes on each other and feel that electrifying buzz of hope once again.
The plan goes very awry, however, when a Commander tries to rape both Moira and June. They respond by fighting back and killing him, with Moira strangling him to death. Jezebel’s then goes into lockdown, presumably ruining plans for their next-day mission (to kill Commanders and save the girls). But Moira and June are surprisingly saved by Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), who smuggles them into his trunk as the screen goes black.
Amid that cliffhanger ending, Wiley speaks below to The Hollywood Reporter about finding Moira’s fire again in this sixth and final season as the Hulu series continues to barrel ahead towards its series conclusion: “This is the Moira that I fell in love with … it’s something I have waited for for a very long time.”
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After such a long break after season five, what was it like to return to set for this final season?
I really thought that it was going to be like, “Oh gosh, it’s been so long; how are we going to get back into this?” But it really was just like riding a bike. The actors that I have been on the show with, the characters that we’ve created, it’s been so long! It’s been eight, nine years, and it really was very seamless, the way we were able to get back to each other and get back to our characters.
We’re finally seeing Moira get into the fight that she’s been wanting to get into ever since escaping Gilead. When you saw the script and what was in store for you in the final season, how did you react?
Every single thing the fans wanted, I wanted too. I felt like: Yes, this is the Moira that I fell in love with. This is the Moira that I said yes to when I was offered the job. This is the Moira that Margaret Atwood wrote about in 1985 when she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale; that Moira who is driven by fire and fight and light, even. The Moira who was the one who even inspired June when she was feeling so downtrodden in season one in the Waterford house — “what would Moira do?” is a line she had.
In the subsequent seasons after escaping Gilead, having to be confined to the borders of Canada, how do you retain that part of yourself? How do you fight from the outside? That is something Moira has been dealing with season after season after season. So her being able to retain and callback that fire this season has been delicious and something I have waited for for a very long time.
Moira (Samira Wiley, left) and June (Elisabeth Moss) reunite with Janine (Madeline Brewer, center), who has been forced to work at Jezebel’s after being banished from the Lawrence home where she was a handmaid.
Disney/Steve Wilkie
Moira and Luke (O-T Fagbenle) confronted June over the Mayday mission. They finally said no to her. June wanted to take your spot and go undercover into Jezebel’s but you refused to stand down: “I’m done living your life. I’m doing this.” Why is Moira finding her voice in this moment?
There are so many shows, especially right now in this time, that just get canceled. When it was announced that this was going to be the final season, it felt right to me. It felt like, with the writers and creators of this show, that it was coming to an end, and all of that was in tandem with Moira being done. Done.
I’m not a writer and wouldn’t have written something as good as the writers did, but it would have been the same sentiment. It has been so long [since season one] that Moira has been literally living June’s life. She’s been parenting her daughter [Holly]. She’s been living with her husband [Luke]. She has forgotten herself in so many ways. And when the fight comes to Canada and she has the opportunity to be involved in a way that she hasn’t been for so long, it’s like, “Get out of my way, June. I don’t have time for this anymore. Let me be me. Let me do me — because this is a lot, girl!”
What do you think Moira was searching for by going back to Jezebel’s?
I think there’s a bit of her that’s searching for herself. Parts of herself that may have been left behind. She’s maybe a bit of a challenge, even for herself. “Can I do this? Am I still the same person?” Also, she knows more than anyone what that place is like, what that trauma in that place looks like. There is a lot of survivor’s remorse that lives in Moira. So she’s always had the pull of her heart strings. All of those things, even parts that are unknown to her at the time, it’s just a calling. Like, “I gotta be a part of this.”
June (Elisabeth Moss) and Moira (Samira Wiley), here undercover as Marthas, try to smuggle out the body of a Commander they killed in self defense.
Disney/Steve Wilkie
Was any of that set the same Jezebel’s set from prior seasons, or did they reconstruct everything?
It was not. But it felt like that place. It really, really, really did. I sometimes get lost inside my characters and so I really was confused about if it was the same place or not. But the truthful answer is no.
But it sounds like you did have a reaction to being back on that set?
Definitely. With all of the creatives on that show, including Elizabeth Williams, our production designer, when you walk onto that set, wherever we are, it elicits even more of a feeling than when first reading the scripts. The attention to detail is astonishing. Sometimes you walk on set and realize, “I don’t have to imagine anything. I am here. I am in the middle of the place that I just read about.” You feel safe almost. You feel taken care of, like you don’t have to do as much work as an actor because everyone is fulfilling their job to the extreme.
There have been some tragic yet heartwarming conversations between you and June (Elisabeth Moss). In this episode, you both agree to stop comparing your suffering. I know the writers heavily research survivors of trauma. What was it like to film those scenes with Lizzie?
Whether I’m in that scene with her or being directed by her, or whether she just happens to come to set and be a fan of the actors who are working that day, working with her is something that I never thought I would really have in my career; to be able to witness someone like that and be inspired by an artist like Lizzie.
It’s emblematic of the whole struggle of The Handmaid’s Tale. What it’s set up is that these men, and also Serena Joy [Yvonne Strahovski] sometimes, have created this place where women are pit against each other: The Aunts, the Kana women, the Handmaids, the Wives, the people who were sent to the Colonies, the Jezebels. We are all fighting a common oppressor, and spending time comparing and trying to quantify trauma is doing their job for them, really. So being able to have a conversation like that is one that, as an actor, I have been waiting for Moira and June to get into. For them to come to the conclusion of: “What are we doing here? This is getting us away from the whole point of what we’re fighting for.”
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The Handmaid’s Tale is now streaming the first five episodes of season six, with new episodes releasing Tuesdays on Hulu. Follow along with THR’s season six interviews.
