Agnes, June's daughter played by Chase Infiniti, here with Daisy, played by Lucy Halliday, in 'The Testaments.' Disney/Russ Martin Logo text [This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the three-episode premiere of The Testaments.]
The Handmaid’s Tale viewers (including this writer) had one big question going into sequel series The Testaments: How would June factor in?
The character who Elisabeth Moss made a household name ended The Handmaid’s Tale series on a mission to never give up fighting for her first daughter, Hannah/Agnes, who was taken by Gilead. But June vowed to do it secretly by continuing to lead the resistance movement called Mayday, and Moss and the show’s creative team behind the groundbreaking Hulu hit sealed their lips about if June’s ending meant she could appear onscreen when the Gilead universe returned with The Testaments.
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Now that The Testaments — the next Hulu and MGM adaptation of Margaret Atwood‘s follow-up novel to The Handmaid’s Tale — has released its first three episodes, the secret is finally out: June is back! She’s revealed in the final moments of the premiere in what creator Bruce Miller calls below a superhero-like introduction, and her connection to this new story is explained in the third episode, when she becomes the Mayday handler for Daisy (Lucy Halliday), the new character who enters Gilead as an undercover “Pearl girl” who befriends June’s taken daughter, Agnes (Chase Infiniti). It’s not made clear yet, however, if June even knows that she sent Daisy to where her daughter is being raised in Gilead.
Below, Miller, creator of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, spills on when they made the call to bring June back onscreen, if Moss needed any convincing (hint: she didn’t) and how they kept this massive secret. “You really want those scenes to feel particularly epic,” he tells THR. “There’s an aspect of superhero to June that we wanted to have in this, because her shadow is over the whole show. She’s looming over the whole thing.”
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The biggest question I tried to get out of you at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale — which you wouldn’t tell me! — was if June would appear in The Testaments. I’m very excited to see that she does. When did you decide that June would have a role in this show?
There are a couple of answers. From the beginning, I felt like June would end The Handmaid’s Tale with certain business unfinished, so if you were going to tap back into Gilead, you would want to know what June was doing. She’s doing something — she hasn’t retired from dramatic operation. It just made sense. Even in the book, The Testaments, June is operating from the outside. You just don’t see her. So that was always an option.
June would always be in this show. It’s a show about her daughter, and she certainly would be very curious about what happened and would be as influent in that life as she could be. It made sense. Then, of course, Elisabeth [Moss] was such a creative partner on The Handmaid’s Tale with me and Warren [Littlefield, executive producer]. She directed and we worked as closely as you could possibly work with anybody. She was absolutely spectacular. So the chance to bring her back in this role came from the fact that she came back in all her other roles. She’s an executive producer on this show. She’s our creative partner. It really did feel like if we had the opportunity, we could bring June into the show in a very natural way because we didn’t have to make a June show. We could bring her in when she affected one of our other stories.
June (Elisabeth Moss), at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, vowed to never stop fighting for the return of her first daughter Hannah, who was renamed Agnes when she was taken by Gilead. Viewers meet Agnes, played by Chase Infiniti, in The Testaments. Disney/Steve Wilkie Did Elisabeth Moss need any convincing to play June again?
I don’t think it took much arm twisting to get Elisabeth say yes. (Laughs.) She very kindly was enthusiastic, and I was thrilled. It is one of the great pleasures of my creative life to watch her do what she does, and to watch it any more times is really great. But I definitely feel like the “business unfinished” that we have with June is part of what this show is about, and to see how that ends up — it would be weird having Agnes be this concerned about who her mother was if we never even saw her mother.
When it came to figuring out how many episodes June could appear in, did the story drive that? Lizzie is busy doing other shows. How much of this was a dance with her schedule? [Note: June appears in future episodes this season.]
All of those things are absolutely true, and it is always a balance of the very, very quotidian practical and the very, very heavy artistic. So what I tried to do is stay in the, “Let’s figure out a good story for June. What’s she going to be doing in these episodes?” And then I just try to be flexible because Elisabeth Moss’ schedule is very full. She’s a very busy artist who does lots of crazy, cool, interesting things, and I want her to continue that. To shoot the show, she has to physically be there. It’s not something you can do via Zoom. So we had to think about that. What I got was a sense of how long I would have her. Whether it’s going to be a day or two days or a week, and then I started to figure out how many episodes I could use her in and what stories I could tell. It ends up being practical. Like, how could she get to this set? But within that practicality, you really want those scenes to feel particularly epic.
It has not leaked that she’s playing June again. Did you hide her in scripts? Did you cover her on set? What lengths did you go to?
We hid her in scripts, absolutely. There’s been a lot to keep her out of. Absolutely.
Did she have a code name in the scripts?
Yes, she had a code name.
Can you tell me what it was?
No. (Laughs.) It wasn’t “Rocket Woman,” which was her code name on Handmaid’s. You only get to watch the first time once. I just want to make it easier if people don’t want to hear spoilers to not hear them and have a more fun experience. That’s all. I want to make this experience unique. Lizzie and myself and Warren all have a very old-school sense of drama. We like episodes that end on a cliffhanger, and I will hang someone off a literal cliff if it takes that to do it. Margaret [Atwood] makes fun of how shamelessly dramatic I am, and I think Lizzie thinks keeping a secret would be great for when it comes out. She has a good nose. And Warren, well, he has made a few shows.
The girls who are growing up in Gilead, played by (second to left) Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Chase Infiniti and Isolde Ardies. Disney/Russ Martin The June reveal at the end of the first episode was thrilling. How much creative brainstorming went into this scene of slowly showing us that June is back? Did you film alternate versions?
A lot went into it, mostly with Mike Barker, who was directing, and our DP Greta [Zozula]. Mike directed these first three episodes. He really stamped the show with a look that said: “How do we move it past Handmaid’s and still make it beautiful?”
There’s an aspect of superhero to June that we wanted to have in this, because her shadow is over the whole show. Her hands are all over the show, but you don’t really see her. So you wanted to get the sense that she’s looming over the whole thing. So bringing her to us in that scene, for Mike as a director, was revealing how well we know her. That when you come up behind her — if you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale, you’re like, “Okay, that’s June.” You can tell just from the way she’s standing. But even if you come around and you’re like, “Who’s that?” and the show ends, there should be no barrier to coming in not knowing anything and moving onto the next story.
You move onto Agnes, who gets her period and that whole story starts — and there’s someone watching Daisy, and we find out later who that is. We really wanted to keep it a surprise and make the reveal the only interesting part. Audiences are so savvy, it’s worth it to try to keep that fun alive.
Coming in as a Handmaid’s Tale viewer and knowing what I know, I’m watching these early episodes thinking, “Of course Aunt Lydia [Ann Dowd] knows who Agnes is, because she has access to the bloodlines.” I thought Daisy’s arrival must be because Lydia and June are working together, but the show doesn’t say that, at least not in these first three episodes. Are you trying to keep that a mystery, in terms of if Lydia knows Agnes’ real identity and if Aunt Lydia and June are working together?
Yes. I did a lot of research on how these kind of rebellions and networks work within. They know nothing about who they’re talking to on the other side. They could be talking to their brother on the other end of the chain, but they don’t know that. And if they found out, it would be hugely dangerous for everybody. All these people are kind of siloed. And if I’m Lydia, I wouldn’t tell June. Would you tell June your daughter’s at her school? Not in a million years. She would do something crazy. So it makes sense for those kinds of operations that Daisy knows one person who’s in Mayday in the whole place, and that’s her handler June and that’s it.
And that’s the reason these resistance movements work. How do they survive more than a year? They’re very secretive, because you see how much pressure they’re under. They don’t have to know specifically who they’re talking to or to have a sense of where that person is or who they might be. But with Lydia and June, they saw each other at the end of [The Handmaid’s Tale] finale. I don’t know that they’ve seen each other since, but they know they’re out there somewhere. June knows at the end of this message train is Lydia, and Lydia knows somewhere at the end of this message train is June. I think they’ve had enough experience together to modulate how they’re going to trust each other, and it’s interesting to watch. You can see it from a distance, how Lydia feels a certain way watching over June’s daughter. You feel that she’s been watching her since the beginning. It’s one of the first things she says, “I’ve been watching you for such a long time.” And Agnes is like, “Oh, crap.”
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The Testaments is now streaming its first three episodes, with new episodes releasing at 9 p.m PT/12 a.m. ET Tuesdays on Hulu. Head here for a refresher on how The Handmaid’s Tale set up The Testaments.
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