Joseph Fiennes inherits the Robert Duvall role of Commander Fred Waterford in Hulu’s miniseries version of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
If you’ve not seen the Natasha Richardson movie or read the Margaret Atwood book, “The Handmaid’s Tale” depicts a dystopian future in which a big chunk of the United States establishes an ISIS-y fundamentalist state and forces its dwindling number of fertile women into to sexual slavery.
(Well, dystopian for some. Did you know Ted Cruz believes if a girl is raped, she should be forced to bear her rapist’s child? He really does! I am not making this up! )
Anyway, “Mad Men” star Elizabeth Moss, who to me will always be Jed Bartlet’s youngest, will play the main sex slave in the Hulu series, set to launch next year.
Press release!
Today Hulu announced Joseph Fiennes will play Commander Fred Waterford in The Handmaid’s Tale.· Joseph Fiennes has joined the cast of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale as ‘Commander Fred Waterford’
· A founding father of Gilead and powerful, high-ranking official, Commander Waterford rules the household where Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a handmaid.
· The Handmaid’s Tale comes to Hulu from MGM Television and is created, executive produced and written by Bruce Miller, with Warren Littlefield, Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears, and Ilene Chaiken serving as executive producers. Atwood is a consulting producer for the series.
· Reed Morano will direct and executive produce the first three episodes.
· The Handmaid’s Tale is scheduled to go into production in Toronto this fall. The 10-episode series is slated to premiere in 2017.
· The drama series, based on the award-winning, best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, is the story of life in the dystopia of Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly part of the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalism that treats women as property of the state. As one of the few remaining fertile women, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a Handmaid in the Commander’s household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world. In this terrifying society where one wrong word could end her life, Offred navigates between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids – where anyone could be a spy for Gilead – all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.
