Margaret Atwood Gave ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Showrunner Bruce Miller a List of Characters He Can’t Kill
Hulu‘s award-winning drama, The Handmaid’s Tale, is based on characters and events from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name. The show has taken liberties with certain storylines and introduced new people. But at Atwood’s request, showrunner Bruce Miller won’t kill off a particular list of characters.
Margaret Atwood wrote ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ sequel called ‘The Testaments’
Atwood published her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, in 1985. And after the success of the Hulu series, she wrote a sequel titled The Testaments, which was released in 2019.
The Testaments takes place 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. It centers around three women — Aunt Lydia, Agnes, and Nicole.
All three come from different backgrounds — Aunt Lydia is an Aunt that serves Gilead; Agnes grew up as an adopted child in Gilead, and Nicole was smuggled out of the country by her handmaid mother when she was a baby. But over time, they form a connection to Mayday and each other.
Atwood’s characters, Agnes and Nicole, were inspired by the Hulu series. They are June’s daughters. And at the end of The Testaments, they reunite with June and their birth fathers.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ showrunner Bruce Miller can’t kill a list of characters Margaret Atwood has written about
Miller often consults Atwood on the direction of the Hulu drama. And during a panel at the Toronto International Film Festival, he revealed how she guides the show’s writing. “She’s been involved from the very beginning,” Miller said. “We certainly wouldn’t do something if she said, ‘No, don’t do that.’ But she never does.”
Miller also noted that Atwood is a fan of the show and enjoys seeing writers explore and flesh out her characters and stories on screen. Miller has been talking to Atwood about developing a new series based on The Testaments for years. And as she was writing the story, she gave him a heads-up on which characters to keep around.
“I’m thinking about The Testaments in terms of what I’m doing here, to try not to make it, so it’s impossible to do, and to kill people off who we need,” Miller explained. “When Margaret started to write [The Testaments], she gave me a list of people I was not allowed to kill.”
Hulu’s ‘The Testaments’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ will tell different stories
Hulu’s The Testaments will carry over characters from The Handmaid’s Tale. But as Miller explained to The Hollywood Reporter, the new series will feel different.
“The Handmaid’s Tale should be good on its own, and when it’s done, it should be a nice little TV set that you put on the shelf next to the novel, and it hopefully adds to your enjoyment of it, and then you can move onto The Testaments,” Miller said.
“The way Margaret did it, which is wonderful, is that you close one and you say, ‘I don’t have to open that, but let’s open the next one and see what’s in there, it could be anything,'” he added. “It is a continuation, but it’s more like a separate chapter. The horizons are more limitless.”
