There’s a reason Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale filmed in Toronto even though it is set in the U.S. The highly anticipated series is based on a book by famed Canadian author Margaret Atwood that is studied in schools across that country.
Picked up straight to series, the 10-episode drama stars Mad Men‘s Elisabeth Moss and takes place in Gilead, a futuristic but simplified world in which fertility issues abound and women’s rights are a thing of the past. In order to keep the population up, government officials in a totalitarian society send young and fertile women — the “handmaids” — to affluent families, where they are forced to help couples procreate via sexual servitude.
“This house is Gilead,” showrunner Bruce Miller told THR during a set visit. “The commander is the patriarchy. The women in the house occupy the different statuses. You kind of reduce Gilead to one place, but what you have to be able to then do is extrapolate. You have to be able to build a whole world out from the house otherwise. So we’re constantly putting little hints and details into it to get a bigger world.”
Below, The Hollywood Reporter breaks down some of the biggest secrets on the show’s elaborate set.
Serena Joy’s Room
By far the most beautiful room of the house, Serena Joy’s bedroom is full of art. All the shades of blue within correlate with the shades of blue from Serena’s costumes (the color-coordination was a huge one between Berghoff and costume designer Ane Crabtree) and the four-poster bed was purposefully designed with one thing in mind: The Ceremony. In fact, there’s a play on blue during Offred’s opening voiceover in the second episode in a scene that takes place in that very room.
Offred’s Room … and the Closet
Unlike the other rooms in the house, Offred’s room is bare and minimalistic. The off-white colors were selected to help make the red of her costumes pop even further, and the adjoining bathroom is completely old school. Meanwhile, the infamous closet where Offred finds the Latin message from a previous Handmaid is actually not a closet at all; it’s a door that leads out to the sound stage but is built out when needed for special scenes.
The Kitchen
It isn’t exactly the heart of the home, but plenty of scenes take place here as Offred and Martha (Amanda Brugel) exchange words and tokens for food. Berghoff designed the kitchen to feel modern but rustic. With no appliances or modern trinkets, she had the tough job of making it feel like a space that would exist in 2017, but one without cookbooks or other such texts. So she loaded it up with fresh herbs and other puritan items one could picture people using and needing in a time like this.
The Symbols
Perhaps one of the biggest jobs of all was creating a world with no text. It took months for an art department of more than 100 people come up with all of the different aspects, and in the end they came up with more than 500 different symbols and labels for the common goods found at the various marketplaces and such.
The Exteriors
Berghoff and her team sourced plenty of modern public spaces for some of the location shoots because they wanted to give the feeling that this is a world that could surface tomorrow — not in the past or in the distant future. They also had to make sure the locations they selected fit in with the show’s color scheme and that the costumes didn’t look out of place. In the end, they included exterior shots at Toronto’s City Hall, where some of the hangings take place, a wall by the water found in Cambridge, Ontario, street shots in Hamilton, Ontario, and various downtown Toronto locations like Front Street and The Harbourfront Centre. In one episode, as June (Moss) is being let go from her job, sharp-eyed viewers can even see the black-and-red Canadian Broadcasting Corp. building.
How appropriate.
The Handmaid’s Tale premieres its first three episodes April 26 on Hulu. What are you looking forward to seeing? Sound off below and bookmark THR.com/HandmaidsTale for full coverage.
Twitter: @amber_dowling
