Elisabeth Moss basically took over ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ directing because of Canada's quarantine rules

Season 4 of The Handmaid’s Tale premieres next Wednesday with back-to-back episodes on CTV Drama Channel starting at 9pET and naturally, the details have pretty hush-hush. What’s happened to June? Is Hannah okay? What about Serena? So many characters’ lives are at stake here since last season.

Elisabeth Moss joined Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show (weeknights at 11:30pET on CTV) last night to dish on what we can expect when the new season premieres on Wednesday.

“I do feel like we have built something over the past three seasons that quite rightly needs to be kind of fulfilled, and I think that we do that this season, with season 4.”

“We kind of fulfill a lot of the promises that we’ve made over the last three years,” she continued over video-chat, “and we really get to see, not just June, but a lot of these characters really go to places they’ve never gone before and change dramatically.”

Some of those “places” include Canada. As we saw when the trailer dropped last month, the flight carrying 86 children does in fact make it to Toronto, and it would appear that so does June, as she is asked by what appears to be Canadian customs if she is seeking asylum.

“Miss Osbourne, if you were returned to Gilead, would you be subject to danger of torture, a risk to your life or a risk of cruel treatment or punishment?” an unidentified voice asks.

From what we can tell: Gilead descends into chaos, June dodges mortar bombs, someone is pushed off a roof, Serena is captured, and someone is choking the life out of Aunt Lydia. Look, we’re not ones to jump to conclusions, but Jimmy then shows a brief clip from season 4, and we’re pretty sure that it’s June choking Aunt Lydia. 

“It’s a huge season,” Elisabeth continued, “which, of course, we chose to shoot during a pandemic, as you do.”

The Handmaid’s Tale, which many already know is shot in Toronto, saw filming shut down last year for six months due to the pandemic, along with almost every film and TV production in Hollywood. According to Elisabeth, that gave her the opportunity to step into the director’s chair not once, but three times.

 “I chose episode three, that was going to be my directorial debut, before COVID, and started it,” she said. “Then, we shut down for the six months, and then all of a sudden, I did that episode, I did two more—I did episodes eight and nine! Because nobody else was there a lot of the time! If a director finished their work and left, and they didn’t want to come back and quarantine for two weeks, somebody had to direct it.”

She continued, “So all of a sudden, I was the director on hand! And it would be like, ‘Lizzy, we’ve got this drone shot we need you to do. Would you mind just running out and grabbing that?'”

 “But by the end, we were joking that I was just going to be this journeyman director now, off to do my ninth episode of Law & Order, just clocking in and clocking out.”

We love this. Like Peggy Olsen, we are seeing the incredible talent of Elisabeth blossom as her career goes forward. And unlike Don Draper, we say thank you!

Season 4 of The Handmaid’s Tale premieres Wednesday, April 28^th at 9pET on CTV Drama Channel. Stream seasons 1 to 3 on Crave anytime.

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