Gilead girls
'Testaments' co-stars find positives in confining TV world
From left, Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti and Isolde Ardies star in "The Testaments," a sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale."
"The Testaments" is set at a premarital preparatory academy.
ENTERTAINMENT
The beauty of Gilead — the restrictive world Margaret Atwood detailed in "The Hand-maid's Tale" and now "The Testaments" — surprised actress Mattea Conforti, who stars in the latter.
"It didn't seem real while we were shooting," she says. "I remember watching a few drone shots, and there's one that reveals where we all go to school and everything just seems so beautiful."
Hidden in those shots are the controls placed on young women — the arranged marriages, the forced beliefs and the mass behavior that exists in unlikely times.
In an early episode of "The Testaments," the young girls react in unison like an angry mob. It's frightening and, says co-star Rowan Blanchard, "it's the only time when the girls are allowed to show emotion and assert any sort of dominance. There were like 200 of us and we were all shouting at 4 in the morning when we shot it. It was amazing to hear everybody commit so hard to yelling."
Adds Conforti: "It's this weird power dynamic switch, where we're taking authority over the men, and shows that we can control their fate. We can show them who's boss."
The two, who play "plums," or girls who are paired with commanders in arranged marriages, admit there's much to criticize in the dystopian world but, says, Blanchard, "people are people, so there's so much friendship and happiness, and there's a lot of light that they find in each other."
"It's an empowering story of a friendship and a really empowering coming-of-age story," Conforti adds.
Because viewers know how the outside world operates, they're likely surprised by Gilead's rules. The girls inside, however, "don't have any sort of outside reference," Blanchard says. "They're being told they live the best life possible and the people on the outside are the ones to pity."
As the girls discover diff erently, they take a new view of Gilead and its commanders.
Conforti and Blanchard figure into the later episodes of the series and say the "revolutionary piece of entertainment" is must-see TV. "It's been such a joy to step into the universe and come into it on my own," Conforti says.
"It's so iconic," Blanchard says of the franchise. "Getting to be part of this amazing, detailed world that Margaret Atwood created is really incredible."
As constrictive as the world appears, the actresses were able to find plenty of humor in the story. "There's so much more than what we perceive as the darkness in Gilead," Blanchard says.
"The Testaments" prompts viewers to question their surroundings and beliefs.
"I think what makes this so relatable to a lot of our audiences is that it really explores the trial and tribulations of being a young woman, growing into your body and figuring out who you are," Conforti says. "It also explores how impactful and powerful friendship is."
"The Testaments" streams on Hulu.
