The Handmaid's Tale

And as a Canadian, I feel a sort of sense of ownership on that book because, you know, Margaret Atwood is a great Canadian author and we all read it in school.

So I was doing the second season of Top of the Lake in Sydney and it came my way as a script. And I had read the book years ago, but sort of didn't, you know, really remember it that well.

A woman is forced to become a handmaiden to bear children for her mistress's husband.

It is half past Handmaid's Tale.

We've seen her in Handmaid's Tale. We've seen her in Mad Men. We've seen her in West Wing Us, all that kind of stuff.

the Handmaid's Tale. These people are...

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And that is how the very famous Margaret Atwood quote that has been used in The Handmaid's Tale, that men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them, came to be.

The handmaid's tale was a 1990 movie was seen like filmed there, there was actually a scene filmed on the back staircase so that happened before Kathleen's death.

That's way too much like Handmaid's Tale.

We're bypassing all security measures and just going straight to Margaret Atwood.

These kinds of silent protests were inspired by Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale.

I was under the impression that this book was based on the Iranian regime.

You've talked a bit about beginning to compose The Handmaid's Tale in West Berlin in 1984. So how did being there then influence the way you thought about the book?

That makes me think of something I notice when reading The Handmaid's Tale, which is how much of the book is occupied with how one communicates when they can't speak freely.

her 1985 book, The Handmaid's Tale, has never stopped being remade and reinterpreted and debated.

reading The Handmaid's Tale, which is how much of the book is occupied with how one communicates when they can't speak freely.

we launched that movie in Berlin just as the wall was coming down. And we launched it twice. We launched it in West Berlin ... and then we went across to East Berlin and we launched it there and it was packed.

And of course, her 1985 book, The Handmaid's Tale, has never stopped being remade and reinterpreted and debated.

That makes me think of something I noticed when reading The Handmaid's Tale, which is how much of the book is occupied with how one communicates when they can't speak freely.

We'll be doing Margaret Atwood's book, The Handmaid's Tale.

J.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic The Hobbit to Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula to Margaret Atwood's dystopian fable The Handmaid's Tale.

So we did The Hobbit and In Cold Blood and The Handmaid's Ted and so on and so forth.

executive producers of The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood of Handmaid's Tale, which I love. She tweeted out an article that asked why we can't say the word women anymore.

The author of the Handmaid's Tale, right? Wrote a piece called Am I a Bad Feminist? Because she defended the due process rights of a professor who is accused of rape.

It's kind of like it's a dystopian version of idiocracy meets the handmaid's tale.

I don't watch that shit. Handmaid's Tale rock the waves. You think I watch girl TV? Handmaid's Tale? They... There's nothing they love more than watching them being like completely suppressed and being like, this better not happen. So you guys will be happier. I just tell my wife, she's watching Handmaid's Tale. I'm like, you'd actually love this. You'd love that.

I was reading the housemaid's tale, you know, that iconic story about a totalitarian future.

they get perilously close to the handmaid's tail stuff.

we got legally married just because we thought like the Handmaid's Tale was going to happen.

I started it. I started one episode. And I was like, you know what? I'm not gonna watch this. It gave me such a pit. ... It's based on a book that was written in the 80s.

Some of the other top books parents have worked to pull from schools are titled Lawn Boy, My Friend Dahmer, Out of Darkness, In the Dream House, The Hate You Give, Flamer, Looking for Alaska, Hopeless, The Handmaid's Tale, a picture book called Dim Sum for Everyone.

Kind of sounds like The Handmaid's Tale.

Oh, a lot like The Handmaid's Tale.

One of the first things that happens when they're slowly taking over is that they close all the women's banking accounts and have their funds transferred to their husband's accounts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The picture book I Am Jazz, Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook and the YA novel Two Boys Kissing also included as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Margot Atwood wrote a really amazing piece in The Guardian. It was, it was from his talk she gave. She of course wrote Handmaid's Tale. And she, I just think she's just a good predictor, not a, you know, she's writing about dystopia. And so it's really quite amazing, a lot of the stuff. In that book, Canada and Mexico were the were the good places and the US was not.

It is Handmaid's Talent. That book is a primer on some of the future, not every bit of it, of course, but it really is an attitude towards women's bodies. And she said enforced childbirth is slavery really of women. And I don't think she said that lightly. It's a very good piece. You should read it.

I liked last year's because Natalie was a pregnant handmade from Handmaid's Tale and I was Anakin Skywalker and Calvin was Darth Vader.

And it made me think about a quote of Margaret Atwood's, the author of the Handmaid's Tale, who said, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them.