Alison: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I want to preview what's happening on the show tomorrow. In a word, books. It's book day. Tuesdays tend to be a day in which a lot of new books get released, and tomorrow is an especially bounteous day. We want to take advantage of that by having three authors come in to talk about their latest releases. Patrick Radden Keefe, Emma Straub, and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. Plus, All Of It producer Jordan Lauf will be here to preview the new books being released this spring, and we want to hear from you about what you're looking forward to reading. That's all coming up tomorrow. Now, let's get this hour started with a series based on a book, The Testaments.

[music]

Alison: It has been nearly a decade since the series adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale. The show ran for six seasons and ended last year, but the story continues. The Testaments is a sequel about the dystopian, patriarchal state of Gilead, starring my next guest, Chase Infiniti. It follows a group of teenagers at a girls' school in Gilead's representative authoritarian state. The girls' education consists of classes in etiquette, but not in science or math, just the subjects that will make them better and dutiful wives.

The school is infiltrated by a girl working for the resistance. In the lead role is Chase Infiniti as Agnes, a girl from an upper-class family, raised by a commander and a strict stepmother. Agnes is mindful of Gilead, but as the series develops, so do her feelings, and like most teenage girls, she has a lot of feelings. Both The Handmaid's Tale and Testaments were adapted by my other guest, Bruce Miller. The first three episodes of The Testaments arrive on Hulu this Wednesday. Chase, welcome to you.

Chase: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Alison: Also, Bruce, welcome to you as well.

Bruce: Good morning.

Alison: When did you know you wanted to adapt the follow-up to The Handmaid's Tale for TV? When did it come into your world?

Bruce: Margaret started talking to us about it in 2017. The Handmaid's Tale had been on the air for a very short time, and she was already thinking about writing a sequel. Really, it came into my life very early, before she had even started writing, and she very kindly treats me like a fellow writer. She talked to me about it as it was coming together. I got not just a preview, but a vision of how it's being built. That made it a lot easier to decide that I wanted to be part of it, because I was part of it from the beginning. She was building it in front of me. That made it a lot easier to see how it was built and how interesting it would be.

Alison: When did this adaptation get on your radar, Chase?

Chase: I feel like it got on my radar at the end of 2024, and I think that was when I sent in my first audition tape. It was kind of hidden under wraps. I remember Agnes's name was Andrea, and I was like, "Okay, cool, let's see what this is about." Read the first script, I was hooked immediately, and then luckily enough, Bruce and the team liked me enough to have me come in for a callback. This is also so weird, not being able to see Bruce. [laughs]

Bruce: I know. [unintelligible 00:03:18].

Chase: I went in for a callback, and then I think at the top of 2025, I found that I booked the role. Then I was in Toronto less than a month later for fittings and whatnot before we started shooting.

Alison: I have to ask you about fittings. The clothing in this show, it really signifies a lot to us, the viewer. What does it signify to you? You're dressed in these sort of gorgeous purples, but there's a malevolence to them. I don't know how to put it any other way.

Chase: It was sick because I remember when we first got there and we're doing our fittings for our costumes, and you see how they're built from the ground up. It really informs the way also that you move in the world. I remember the first time putting on one of the costumes that they made, it was one of the dresses, and I was like, "Wow, it's made to fit me, but it's still very restrictive." I think that that at baseline really helped me figure out how I wanted to move in the world and how Agnes would move and the restrictiveness of it. The costumes are so beautiful, and I was so excited to put them on every single day. You definitely are launched into Gilead pretty quickly in the morning.

Alison: Bruce, you sort of laughed when I mentioned the costumes. Why did you laugh?

Bruce: Just because they are restrictive. It's built into the idea, but I think you forget that clothing can be so restrictive because we don't wear uniforms around generally. I don't know if Chase wore a uniform to school, but it really is that--

Chase: I did.

Bruce: Also, I think once you look around as a creator or when the actors look around and there's 60 other people in plum and pink, that really drops you into the world in a way. It's not just from the inside out. You're looking around, and everywhere you look is Gilead.

Alison: You wore uniforms in school?

Chase: I did. I did. Up until I think I was like 12 or 13 maybe. I had the uniform, the polo, the khakis, same thing every day, and I was like, "What can I wear to make this different?" Granted, you can't do that in Gilead.

Alison: Try.

Chase: I'm going to try.

Alison: We need to go over that well. Bruce, the events take place four years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale. What's happened in Gilead and the rest of the world in between the two series?

Bruce: I think Gilead has been punched, and like a lot of people who get punched, they're very angry and punching back. I think that what happened at the end of The Handmaid's Tale really brought Gilead down a notch, and they're hurting, although they're trying everything they can to make the world inside look unbruised. As much as possible, it's life during wartime, but the young women on our show don't see that and don't feel that.

I think where we are is that Gilead is desperately trying to keep things normal, and the rest of the world is starting to encroach, and Gilead is starting to weaken. There's nothing more dangerous, I think, than Gilead weakened and on their back legs. I think it's very scary, especially what they'll do to this next generation of women.

Alison: It also puts your claws out when you're on your back foot. What is Agnes like when we meet her?

Chase: When you meet Agnes, I will say my best descriptor for her is she is like the princess of Gilead. She has her whole life figured out for her, and she's comfortable with where she is in the world. She understands the ins and outs of Gilead, the things that she can do that won't get her in trouble, but she can still maintain her personality with her friends. You see her in a state of being completely comfortable with who she is, where she is. She has love in her life. I would say that she's totally like the princess of Gilead when you first meet her.

Alison: It's interesting because in The Handmaid's Tale you're dealing mostly with women. In this, you're dealing with teenage girls. Has that changed the perspective?

Chase: I think from the start, even getting to work with girls around my age, you feel that burst of energy and the burst of youth, I guess, and that carries through the screen, I would say. I think one of the things I was so excited to do, since you're talking about the youth, was just talk about the things that are so universal, like having friends, the big emotions that you were saying earlier, having a crush, going through puberty, which makes everything even more crazy than it already is.

I loved that about our show. I thought that that was also something that could be a strong connection point, too, with newer audiences, with younger audiences, because even though Gilead is Gilead, there's things that are universal regardless of where you're from. I would say that friendship, love, and puberty is a big one of them.

Alison: Bruce, teenage girls are still teenage girls in many ways. They gossip, sometimes they bully each other. How do you think about what living in Gilead would change about the way the girls interact, and what would remain the same the way teenage girls interact as a teenage girl yourself? [laughs]

Bruce: That is the big issue right here is why am I doing this. You have to ask me your question again. What would change and what would stay the same?

Alison: Yes.

Bruce: I think almost everything stays the same. It just stays inside and the same. I think that the force of friendship and adolescence or puberty and all the forces that push a teenage girl into womanhood, those are much, much stronger than anything that Gilead can do, and you've seen it through history. There's no totalitarian state in the world that didn't have rebellious teenagers. Even in North Korea, they have rebellious teenagers. I think that what Margaret was tapping into and what we've continued is you're really looking at an irresistible force hitting an immovable object, and Gilead is the immovable object, but teenage girls are definitely an irresistible force.

Alison: I'm speaking to actor Chase Infiniti and showrunner Bruce Miller about The Testaments, the new series adaptation of Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. The series premieres on Hulu on Wednesday. Chase, what was the most challenging part of getting Agnes right?

Chase: Getting Agnes right. I think I wouldn't say challenging, but I knew how loved Hannah is and still is. I think that that was something that I was super mindful of because she has so much love around her, both in The Handmaid's Tale and also in The Testaments. I wouldn't say it was necessarily a challenge, but it was something that I really wanted to make sure that I kept true and I kept honest, and I wanted to lead with her honesty and lead with her love. I wouldn't say it was a challenge, but it was definitely something that I was like, "I have to make sure that I do this right."

Alison: Bruce-- We're going to talk about you like you're not here, Chase.

Chase: I know. I'm going to turn away.

Alison: Why was Chase the right choice for Agnes?

Bruce: There's a lot of reasons. I think, first of all, and up front, her audition was excellent. She's a very gifted woman and a very gifted actress, but she works her ass off as well. She was very, very ready, and her audition was very fully baked as a person. Knowing that she really didn't know quite what the script was about or what it was connected to is even more impressive. Then I think with Chase, it was, A, that she felt like she owned the character, which is very hard in a character that's been played by seven other actresses over the time period, but also I felt like she had a lot of range as an actor.

When I looked at the things that she had done, I had seen Presumed Innocent, and I knew that she had been in One Battle After Another, but I hadn't seen any footage. You see the footage you have, and then you see the performance by the actor in the audition, but then you speak to the person a little bit, talk to Chase a little bit, and then you look around into her world. One of the things we found was looking at the things she had posted on social media, and the range of human being between those things is what really--

In TV, it's all about range. In film, it's fine, it's two hours. You don't need that much range sometimes, but in success, I need Chase to be able to do lots more than she's done. You have to look for range when you're casting a television actor.

Alison: That's so interesting. I wrote a little note to myself. Ask Chase about scripted versus movie.

[laughter]

Alison: You're in all episodes of this show versus One Battle After Another, an amazing movie.

Chase: Thanks.

Alison: By the way, congratulations on the Oscar.

Chase: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Alison: It's a different species than a TV show. What's the difference for you as an actor having to sustain all of the episodes versus being in a movie?

Chase: First of all, Bruce, you are so sweet, so thank you so much. I think the big difference for me is you need to have stamina to be in a TV show, and it's not a bad thing. It's just something that it takes a second to get back into. Then I guess with film, for me, the thing that I wasn't used to at the time when I did that is I wasn't used to how much time we had. With that one, we could spend days on a scene, whereas in TV you move at a much quicker pace, and you're memorizing material at a quicker pace.

I think that there are just different muscles that I'm using in my mind and in my body. I just remember when we first started shooting, I was like, "Oh, I forgot what it was like to film a TV show, let alone I've never, I guess, been the lead of one." That was a massive learning curve, too. I really leaned on our cast and crew, and to Bruce and to all of our other producers. 99% of my success in the show is because of them. I wouldn't have been able to do anything without them.

Alison: What have you learned about being number one on the call sheet?

Chase: Oh, God. I think the thing I've learned or the thing I've tried to do is be a voice of advocacy for everybody as much as I can. If I can't be that, instill the confidence in my fellow actors and the people around me that they can. I think that that's something that I felt very fortunate to learn very early on in my career with Presumed Innocent, and Ruth Negga, my co-star, taught me the importance of that.

I've taken it forward with me even on One Battle, and it's something that I really wanted to make sure to be there for people, especially on this since we have so many younger girls who this could be their first TV show, this could be their seventh or eighth, but they're at a much higher, I guess, number on the call sheet, which is intimidating at times. I really wanted to be a voice of advocacy for people as much as I could.

Alison: We're talking about The Testaments, which premieres on Hulu this Wednesday. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking to actor Chase Infiniti and showrunner Bruce Miller about The Testaments, a new series adaptation of Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. The series premieres on Hulu this Wednesday. This is a question for both of you. Bruce, I'm going to have you go first. I was thinking about this after watching the first three episodes. I kind of debated myself, how much is Agnes a little girl and how much is she a young woman? What do you think?

Bruce: My sense is she's much more a young woman than a little girl. Gilead is keeping her a little girl, but I think that, especially growing up in a place like Gilead, you become grown up much more quickly. I think while they are constantly trying to infantilize all women and especially the younger women, I think that the character of Agnes and all her friends are absolutely, they feel like young women, which is why it feels so weird they're trying to make them little girls.

Alison: What do you think, Chase?

Chase: I would say the exact same because the girls of Gilead stop becoming little girls the second that they stop becoming pinks. Like Bruce said, you're--

Alison: Dressing in pink?

Chase: Yes, dressing in pink for context because Agnes is a plum, technically. The pinks are the little girls in Gilead.

Alison: That's creepy. Let's just start there.

Chase: Yes.

[laughter]

Chase: The second that you leave that, you become a plum, and I think that once you become a plum, these girls are forced even faster into young adulthood. I think that in general, in life, girls are forced to become more mature far beyond their other male classmates. I think it's even quicker in Gilead, but you have the thing that Bruce was talking about where Gilead's also trying to keep them as little girls, but that's just not possible.

Alison: How does Agnes fit in at school?

Chase: Fit in at school? I think she has it figured out. She's really, like I was saying earlier, comfortable with the system. She knows the ins and outs. She has her friends, which also gives her a stronger sense of groundedness in her environment. I think as the show progresses, that starts to become a shaky thing, but definitely when you first meet her, you're like, "This girl has it figured out. She knows exactly what school is like, what her after-school system is going to be like."

Alison: Let's hear a clip from the series, The Testaments, which features Agnes and the other girls at school, and Daisy, who has recently come to the school as a pearl girl, someone from the outside who's coming into the fold. This is from The Testaments.

Agnes: Daisy.

Daisy: Craig.

Agnes: Where do you hail from?

Daisy: Toronto, Canada. Miss?

Agnes: Shunammite.

Daisy: That's a beautiful name.

Agnes: It is. I imagine Canada is very different from Gilead.

Daisy: Toronto has been forsaken by God and defiled by Satan. It is suffocating in sin.

Agnes: Do you miss it?

Daisy: I pray it will be swallowed whole by the earth.

Actress 1: Hold your knife and fork properly, girls.

Agnes: May he hear your prayer.

Alison: Oh, they're so creepy. Bruce, the relationship between Daisy and Agnes becomes increasingly important to The Testaments. I don't want to give too much away, but how important was it to cast this group of young women?

Bruce: I think, especially in this show, casting is everything, I think, because you're digging around in the actor's ability for so long. I didn't do any chemistry reads. There were so many great young actors who were submitted. Really, the casting people, they see 1,000 people, and I see 10. They really make it so that the people I'm choosing from are all very, very, very suitable, and you're just looking for someone who's good. I think the most important thing beyond talent is personality. You want people who are good at working together because if you have one person who's kind of sour, that person doesn't put in a bad performance. Everybody else does because that person is spoiling for a fight.

TV is a lot about harmony, and harmony is about checking people's references. You do that a lot beforehand, but you do it quite deeply. With Chase, fortunately, I knew O-T Fagbenle from Handmaid's. When he knew we were looking at Chase, he called and let me know that he had worked with her and met her on Presumed Innocent and really thought she was not just a very talented actress, but the right kind of person to have at the top of the call sheet.

Alison: You sound like a good leader.

Chase: Oh, thanks. Thank you.

Alison: That's what I'm hearing him say. All right. Let's talk rage. In the first episode--

Chase: Teenagers love rage.

Alison: They love rage. We see a guy who basically gets his arm cut off. In that moment, your character goes wild. It's like a Lord of the Flies moment in that moment. What do we learn about Agnes in that moment when they're just screaming for this man to have his arm cut off?

Chase: I think the thing you learn about Agnes is the thing that you learn with all of these girls is they're not allowed to show any sense of emotion about anything. This is the one time that they can let it all out and not be, for lack of a better term, punished for it. If there was any other circumstance where any of these girls would even raise their voice slightly at anybody, they would be punished for it.

At that point, it's the first moment you see in Gilead where everything is not perfect and not everyone is put together and has it all figured out. That's the moment that you're like, "Oh, what's going on underneath the surface? Are you okay?" Granted, they aren't. That's the first time that you see how strong the rage is inside of them, whether or not they know it.

Alison: The novel, The Testaments, is separated into three different perspectives, Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia. Bruce, what opportunities did that shifting structure present to you when you were adapting this?

Bruce: Point of view is everything in writing, and point of view, especially in television. If you look at The Handmaid's Tale, the restrictive point of view of June really makes the show scary. If it didn't have a restricted point of view, it wouldn't be scary. If you knew from 30,000 feet what was going on and what was going to happen every day, then only the fact that she is in ignorance is scary. Here we get to see more different parts of Gilead through the three perspectives, and I think that's incredibly helpful.

You can open up your eyes and you can open up your show to more parts of Gilead. I think the most important thing to me is that you really hear three different voices of three different women at different ages and with different perspectives. I think for me, Handmaid's was Gilead through her eyes, and as terrible as it was, it was through her eyes. There's more Gileads here to explore because there's more eyes looking at them.

Alison: Chase, Agnes is raised by two white parents, the commander and her stepmother who's a you-know-what.

[laughter]

Alison: Do you think race plays a part of her identity, Agnes' identity?

Chase: I honestly think that it's unfortunately something she's not necessarily thought of in a way because she has other Black people around her. She has her Martha Zilla, who's really like one of her closest companions in a way, and she has other friends at school like Jehoshaphat. I guess from the sense of her being raised by two white parents, it's not really been put at the forefront as much as I think it would, which is crazy to think about, especially because the world that Gilead is and the things that they stand for, and Agnes is not a lot of the things that they would like necessarily.

She also, again, comes from an incredibly privileged place, and it doesn't play as large a part in her life because of who she's the daughter of, and I guess her compared to her peers in that sense, and also just what she can offer the world in a way. She's privileged in the sense of where she grew up, but she's also very privileged in that way as well.

Alison: Bruce, we get glimpses of the world before Gilead. One of Agnes' Marthas explains Tinder to her. In the dialogue, how much did you think about the balance between recognizable real-world imagery versus the world of Gilead?

Bruce: I think you want to be thoughtful about it and just make sure it makes sense. Although Agnes has never seen Bugs Bunny, her parents, both Paula and Kyle have, and the parents of all her friends. What seeps through? What in my language would seep through to my children even if they didn't have it? They say weirdo, for example, which is probably something from their parents.

I'm very, very, very fussy with the dialogue because these girls are so careful in the way that they speak. I have to be very careful. Literally, you don't have that many words to speak in an episode of television, so you can be pretty fussy. We do go down the rabbit hole quite a bit on what words would they use, where would they have heard them. It's an interesting experiment to do mean girls in Gilead with a bunch of young women who've never seen mean girls. They're not doing an imitation of mean girls. They're doing themselves.

Bruce: Do you remember an example of that?

Chase: I can't think of one specific one, but what Bruce was talking about, especially the things that the girls hear from their parents. Shunammite is a case in point, the perfect person of-- She will listen and repeat to what she hears her Martha say, what she hears her parents say. That's one of the things that I really love about Shunammite specifically is that and that part about her personality.

Alison: The Handmaid's Tale premiered almost a decade ago, Bruce, and in some ways where we live in the United States is very similar. It's very different. That was before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Same president, same name. Have you thought about making the show for this moment?

Bruce: As little as possible. I think the best thing about Handmaid's Tale is I read it when I was in college and I reread it over the years. Every time I read it, it seemed like it was written for that moment.

Alison: Oh, that's interesting.

Bruce: I really think it's kind of a testament to the prescience of Margaret. She picks up on the friction points between government and people, between men and women, and those friction points don't go away. I think she doesn't write for the current moment. I think she has a worldview that's much broader than that. I try not to write for the moment. I try to adapt the book, and the book speaks to lots of moments, and I'm sure it will continue to speak to lots of moments. B

Honestly, the timing in TV is too slow. I wrote all of the season of Handmaid's Tale the first season before the election in November. I had no idea what was going to happen. It's no fun that we sit around, Chase and I and all of us, thinking of the worst things in the world that can happen to women, and then they happen. It's no fun to be right in that way. It's awful.

Alison: I also believe creative people, they pick up on stuff. I do believe that. Chase, you have an incredible voice.

Chase: Thank you.

Alison: I know musical theater is really important to you, and we have a lot of Broadway people who listen to this show.

Chase: Hi.

Alison: Hi. What's your dream role on Broadway?

Chase: Oh my gosh. I have so many. I went to school for musical theater. When I tell people I never could have imagined being in TV and film, I genuinely mean that. I never could have pictured it. I'm so happy to be here, but Broadway is my dream. I'm trying to think of one. Natasha in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is-

Alison: So good.

Chase: -one of my dream roles, and it's been since I saw it in 2017. I've loved Denée Benton ever since then. I think that that show was absolutely incredible. If I could be anybody in Pippin, I think I would do a back flip. There's so many shows. I always forget some, and then I'm like, "Oh man, I should have said that one instead. I should have said that one too."

There's so many, and a lot of the time I'm like, "Whether or not it's a named character, I just want to be in the ensemble." I would die to tap in something. Granted, I'm not probably as strong as I used to be, but I love to tap and I love to dance. If I could just be in anything, I'll carry a prop across the stage. I don't care. I just want to be in the show. I literally just want to be in the room, and that will make me the most happy person on the planet.

Alison: You heard her, Broadway producers. One last question, and this is just me talking to you. It's like curly hair. You have curly hair.

Chase: I do.

Alison: I got curly hair. It's never the same the same day.

Chase: Exactly.

Alison: How did you do that on the set?

Chase: Listen, I'm going to tell you my secret. Okay? I'm going to tell you my secret. The tea of the truth is we had an incredible hair department, but I would twist my hair every Sunday. Every single Sunday, I would sit myself down and I would give myself three hours to wash and twist my hair and set it for the week. I feel so grateful that I also had an incredible woman named Sue Ann, who was doing my hair while we were shooting. She would keep up with the maintenance, but I would twist my hair every single Sunday without hesitation because I've done that for the past five years. I did that on Presumed Innocent. I twisted my hair. I did my own hair for One Battle. I know it's never the same, but-

Alison: You did a good job, though.

Chase: -listen--

Alison: Continuity.

Chase: Yes, the continuity is not me, but the initial set, that's me. Everything after that, that all goes to our incredible hair department. I can't take credit for that because I would be lost without them.

Alison: Bruce, how did you do your hair for the-- No, I'm just kidding.

[laughter]

Bruce: It's a big thing. She's casual about it, but our business handles Black girl hair very poorly. The fact that she had to do her hair every Sunday is not fair.

Alison: What's called being number one on the call sheet, man. You took charge of the situation.

Chase: I know it was difficult to do every Sunday, but it also was a great point of me being able to reset. I'm literally washing my hair completely starting fresh and I could force myself to sit down and watch something. I would watch a movie, I would watch a TV show, I would get on FaceTime with my friends because even though it was the weekend, I wouldn't necessarily give myself time off, and that was a time I could give myself three hours to do nothing or recharge myself. Even though it was tough, I was so glad that I did that so I could have a forced break for myself because otherwise I would not let myself do that.

Alison: A little bit of self-care. The new series is The Testaments. It's going to premiere this Wednesday on Hulu. My guests have been Bruce Miller, the showrunner, and actor Chase Infiniti. It was nice to meet both of you.

Chase: Aw, thank you so much. It was so nice to talk to you.

Bruce: Thank you so much.

 

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