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Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts connected nan Page features standout play bid scripts successful 2026 Emmy contention.
Stepping distant from Hulu‘s Emmy-winning The Handmaid’s Tale and into nan world of The Testaments, viewers were met pinch thing lighter, much vibrant and youthful, a communicative based connected Margaret Atwood’s caller of nan aforesaid name.
The hopes and dreams of nan teens successful Gilead — Agnes (Chase Infiniti), Becka (Mattea Conforti), Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard) and Hulda (Isolde Ardies) — are pure, but there’s nary escaping nan reality of wherever they live. These young ladies are primed for a life of modesty and subservience to their husbands and nan early fathers of their children.
The quartet are introduced successful Episode 1 titled “Precious Flowers” arsenic Plums, teen girls predestined to wed precocious Gilead Commanders who deterioration uniforms successful twinkling shades of plum to schoolhouse and get successful a plum autobus pinch matching curtains covering nan rider windows.
When Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a autochthonal Canadian, is recruited to subordinate Gilead, Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) makes her a Pearl Girl, a group of missionaries and Aunts successful training who will 1 time themselves enlistee different susceptible young women to subordinate them. Daisy is paired pinch Agnes, and it doesn’t return agelong for nan caller woman to beryllium welcomed by Agnes’ friends, pinch Becka serving arsenic nan holdout successful Season 1.
The Plums, again minus Becka, want to please their parents and their organization by marrying whomever nan Aunts take arsenic their champion matches, group up location and person babies. But arsenic Season 1 progresses, nan girls are revealed arsenic being smart, brave and curious. And pinch nan summation of Daisy, who had lived her life extracurricular of Gilead, they study that there’s much for them retired there. However, that roadworthy could lead them to nan constituent of nary return. Rebellion, thy sanction is June Osbourne.
Bruce Miller, who adapted Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale — winning Emmys for penning nan opening section and for Outstanding Drama Series — besides created nan sequel. Below is his premiere book on pinch an intro successful which he speaks astir nan “extraordinary balancing act” successful Atwood’s The Testaments and nan sisterhood of teenage girls astatine its halfway whose tone he tried to capture. The bid already has been renewed for a 2nd season.
When I publication Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, I felt that aforesaid haunting emotion I had erstwhile I first publication The Handmaid’s Tale decades earlier. There is simply a timelessness to Margaret’s penning and world-building — nan specifications of her worlds consciousness some ancient and nostalgic and besides alarmingly immediate.
As I began nan aviator book for The Testaments series, I was drawn many times to Margaret’s bonzer balancing enactment successful The Testaments novel: Forbidden sisterhoods, rage alongside humor, brutality alongside resilience, panic alongside hope. Taking connected nan situation of continuing to show stories wrong Margaret’s world was intimidating, arsenic it should be, but I tried to attack nan task pinch respect and attraction and affection.
What moved maine astir successful The Testaments was its formed of teenage girls — nan Plums seemed to beryllium sparkling, creative, impulsive, curious, profoundly loyal, and fresh to mobility nan world astir them. They were coming of property successful a nine built to ruthlessly and viciously suppress each those instincts. No matter really overmuch Gilead tries to power them, however, I was eager to spot these girls break done each obstruction group earlier them. They shape bonds, autumn successful love, make reckless choices, and rebel. That tone runs done each page of nan book, and I tried to seizure it successful nan book arsenic well.
Never underestimate nan powerfulness of a teenage girl.
Read nan book below.
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