Blessed be. Following its Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning first season, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale has cast an integral character from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel for its upcoming sophomore cycle.
Emmy winner Cherry Jones (24) will guest-star as Holly, the feminist mother to June/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) who, up until now, has only been mentioned in passing during flashback scenes. She will appear in episode three. Check out a first-look photo of her Handmaid’s Tale appearance above. (As season two is still in production, it’s unclear if Jones will return for more than one episode.)
Holly is described as an outspoken feminist and a judgmental but loving mother to June. In Atwood’s novel on which the MGM Television drama is based, Offred often reflects on her mother’s feminist causes and how, in the past, she found them to be extreme — an opinion that slowly shifts as the world of Gilead takes shape. In that version of the story, Holly’s precise present-day fate remains unclear to Offred, but she surfaces during a Handmaid’s training video shown to the girls at the center, hinting that she wound up in The Colonies where radiation probably killed her.
