‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ star Samira Wiley on Moira ‘ending her trauma in Gilead’
WARNING: The following story contains spoilers about the fifth episode of The Handmaid's Tale's sixth and final season, "Janine."
A lot of The Handmaid's Tale's sixth and final season is about coming full circle, primarily in returning key characters to Gilead in order for them to lead a revolution from inside its borders. However, for Moira and her portrayer Samira Wiley, it goes well beyond just the basic setting, though: It also includes getting to share so many scenes with Elisabeth Moss and getting to showcase the fire within Moira once again.
"That Moira that we first got to know when Season 1 came out back in 2017, the person that sent the letters that said, 'Praise be, bitch,' I feel like she definitely gets to end her story in a way that makes sense to who she is at her core," Wiley tells Gold Derby. "There are a lot of things I got to do this season that I never got to do on any other television show before. And people who are fans of this show, who have stuck with it for this long, are going to be rewarded for their dedication."
Especially when compared to other characters, Moira got out of Gilead very early on in the show's run and has spent the majority of the years working with Mayday from across the border. Although she has been fighting just as hard as June, it has been in much different circumstances, including "living June's life," to a degree, Wiley recalls, like "stepping in as a surrogate mother for her child, living with her husband, trying to make sure she gets her back at all costs."
Now, though, she and June are fighting side by side, which is what Wiley has wanted this whole time. "As an actor, being able to sort of play a tennis match with the best tennis player was really amazing," she says of working with Moss. And it's "heightened this season because Lizzie directed more than a third of the season."
"The friendship that we have, the trust that has been cultivated over the last however many years that we've been doing this, it was really magical," Wiley continues.
The onscreen reunion between June and Moira earlier this season did not come without tension, though, because June's ideas on how to take down Gilead did not match what Moira, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), and the rest of Mayday was planning. In Tuesday's fifth episode, titled "Janine," June and Moira end up back inside the scene of Moira's Gileadian trauma — Jezebel's — to find Janine (Madeline Brewer) and enlist her help in their plan to get all of the women out.
"This is one of the times where I was really, really able to appreciate set design, production design. … When you walk into that set, honestly, it was like flashbacks, immediately, of what it was like that first season. I remembered the costumes that I wore, I remembered the smell," Wiley says. "I had a physical, bodily experience of walking into that place and feeling that trauma. All of the things I had done with Moira as a character came back."
The Emmy winner acknowledges that "reliving the trauma of Jezebel's … can be overwhelming," and she was careful to "make sure the struggle was there [for Moira], that people could feel that I was walking the line" of expressing some emotion of being back in the space while also moving forward to get the job done. But there were moments of catharsis as well.
Moira and June share a pivotal scene in which Moira reminds June she has suffered too, and June acknowledges that she doesn't truly understand what Moira has gone through. The two are able to talk about how it's unfair to compare their trauma.
"It's such a moment of coming together and of being understood, finally, or feeling seen for Moira," Wiley says. "Talking about comparing trauma is something that I think can derail any kind of movement, especially when there's a common oppressor. [On] The Handmaid's Tale, in general, we have the wives, the Marthas, the handmaids, and we all have a common oppressor, and I feel like we really got to that — to speaking about that and making sure that that was poignant and finally talked about in a way that I have always thought about in playing Moira."
Another, perhaps surprising, moment of catharsis (and full-circle moment back to the Moira we met in Season 1) came for Wiley after Moira kills the guard who barges in on June and Moira in Jezebel's and plans to assault them. Even as he is threatening them, Moira refuses to back down, telling him to "f--k off."
"There's some things about Moira where, even for her own best interest, can't keep that fire contained," Wiley says. "I do really feel like I, in that situation, would be like, 'Moira, girl, keep your mouth shut right now.' [But] I remember when I said the line, just having this struggle of, 'I have to speak up, not only for myself but everyone.'"
The guard throws Moira on the bed, but she and June are able to attack him together, with Moira ultimately being the one to fatally strangle him.
"We have a whole amazing stunt team that we work with, but I really pushed for me to be able to do that entire stunt. It was very important for me, at the end of that scene, to have had my body go through all of the physical movements," Wiley says. "Just breathing with him like that and feeling his life go out of him was awesome. It felt sort of like … ending her trauma in Gilead."
Although Moira has killed before, Wiley says she thinks this experience changes Moira, not only by emboldening her, but also by bringing her and June even closer together.
"It changes her in the way that any fear that would have been there is dampened because there's a triumph. We are in there and we are a team again, and we have collectively done this thing. There is one win, and ... there's hope," she explains.
The Handmaid’s Tale drops new episodes of its final season Tuesdays on Hulu.