In the Running: Emmy Contenders in Conversation With The Ankler is a special series hosted by Prestige Junkie’s Katey Rich, Ankler Media awards editor. She chats with top talent from Disney networks and streaming platforms — including ABC, Disney+, FX and Hulu. In the Running is presented by Disney.
Making a series with such lofty ambitions as Hulu’s Margaret Atwood adaptation The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, takes a lot of work — but at least one part of the process was easy for stars Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday.
“The second I met Chase, we went for dinner the same night in Toronto, and it was an instant connection,” Halliday (Blue Jean) says, adding she felt a similar bond with the other young stars in the cast, including Mattea Conforti and Rowan Blanchard.
“It felt so effortless getting to know everybody,” adds Infiniti. “From the first table read, it felt like we were back in high school. It felt very energetic and exciting.”
That excitement from the franchise’s new cast members extended to Handmaid’s Tale veterans as well, like Ann Dowd, who reprises her Emmy-winning role as Aunt Lydia from the earlier series.
“There’s a softer, perhaps gentler quality to Lydia, not that she’s lost her core — she hasn’t,” Dowd says. “But seeing how she deals with these groups of girls… it’s all very, very wonderful to live through and try to learn from.”
The Handmaid’s Tale has become one of the most significant works of dystopian fiction in the 40 years since its publication, imagining a patriarchal, authoritarian world in which women are “assigned” to high-status men to bear their children.
Atwood’s novel was adapted for television by creator Bruce Miller, with Elisabeth Moss in the starring role as June. The Testaments, published in 2019, picks up after the events of the first book, focusing more on the dismantling of Gilead, the totalitarian regime that took over the United States, rather than its rise to power. The follow-up series, also created by Miller, stars Infiniti as Agnes (the daughter of Moss’ character) and Halliday as Daisy, teenagers whose time at an elite preparatory school for future wives inside Gilead forges their bond.
“Having the book as a source material was very helpful to find the essence of Daisy,” Halliday, 21, says. “Whenever I had a moment of doubt — or just needed a sort of sense of grounding of who Daisy is — I would kind of revert to that and go, ‘Okay, I’ve got it.’ I think that helped and that it’s also a really lovely way for individuals who are fans of the book to know that yes, there are changes in the story on screen, but the essence of those characters and the text definitely remains.”
Infiniti, 26, agrees. “I remember, especially when we were first starting, I really relied on building the core elements of Agnes through the book — whether that be kind of her feelings about her friends, her feelings about her family, about different characters,” she says.
The actress, who enjoyed a breakout last year in best picture winner One Battle After Another, says it was a privilege to have Atwood’s text as a baseline.
“You’re seeing a different part of Agnes (from her depiction in The Handmaid’s Tale),” she adds. “That was fun to build.”
