“The Testaments ”stars and showrunner break down the 'full-body chills' and thrills of the “Handmaid's Tale ”sequel premiere

Ryan ColemanWed, April 8, 2026 at 4:00 AM UTC

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Chase Infiniti on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney

For nine years, we lived under his eye. Now, may the Lord open... the gates back into Gilead.

The Testaments, the first sequel to The Handmaid's Tale since its heartfelt, though characteristically explosive, series finale in 2025, made its three-episode premiere on Hulu on Tuesday.

If you kept up with the bloody dystopian series based on the acclaimed novel by Margaret Atwood, you'll remember that the central fascist republic, which conquered strategic territories across North America, was defeated in that finale. Well, at least the Boston stronghold was.

The Testaments star Chase Infiniti's serene opening narration picks us up "four years since the war in Massachusetts." And unfortunately, life has carried on as usual elsewhere in Gilead, which subjects its women to the same degree of brutal, misogynistic repression.

Ahead of the premiere, Entertainment Weekly sat down with Infiniti, her co-lead Lucy Halliday, standout supporting performers Amy Seimetz and Mabel Li, Ann Dowd, the sole member of the core cast to cross over from The Handmaid's Tale, and the creator and showrunner of both series, Bruce Miller, to break down what Li called the "full-body chills" and thrills of this disturbing new vision of Gilead.

A still of the 'Pearl Girls' on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney/Steve Wilkie

Surely if you kept up with The Handmaid's Tale, you've been aware since 2019, when the Emmy-winning series was only in its third season, that a sequel was on the table. Atwood, whom Seimetz rightly terms "Canadian royalty," published The Testaments that year to the highest acclaim an author can receive — the novel jointly won the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other.

Atwood's Testaments is a sequel to her Handmaid's Tale, however, not Miller's Handmaid's Tale, which over the course of six seasons far surpassed the bounds of its source, fabricating entirely new characters, storylines, and eventualities. That means his Testaments is a sequel his The Handmaid's Tale, but also an adaptation Atwood's Testaments, which is a sequel only to its novel predecessor, not Miller's series.

"There were many factors involved," Miller says judiciously. "Fortunately, I've had a good working relationship with Margaret from the very beginning, she was incredibly generous and allowed me to kind of do what I wanted to do, which is defer to her work and defer to her world building whenever I possibly could."

Affably, and evincing no sign that weaving all these disparate strands into a single, cohesive series engendered any strain, Miller reiterated how "fortunate" he was to "have [Atwood] around. Most classic books you adapt, the person is long gone. So it was like having Euripides around. It was amazing."

Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney/Russ Martin

Miller took the same approach to the Testaments that he did to The Handmaid's Tale — and remember, that approach resulted in 15 Emmys and record viewership numbers, even by the time of its finale. It is quite a faithful adaptation of Atwood's novel, but isn't afraid to cut, add, combine, and revise where need be.

The series follows the entwined fates of two girls thrust into the grinding core of a stratum of Gilead society rarely explored in The Handmaid's Tale. Infiniti's Agnes MacKenzie is the daughter of a Commander, one of the elite male architects of the fascist republic. While enrolled at a prestigious girls' school, the Machiavellian Handmaid's Tale fave Aunt Lydia (Dowd) deputizes her to look after a "refugee" from the "wicked world" outside of Gilead, a so-called Pearl Girl named Daisy (Halliday).

Initially unsure of one another, Agnes and Daisy must nevertheless weather the common tribulations of girlhood together, which take on nightmarish new valences inside Gilead. From getting their periods (instant and unbreakable marriage follows), to managing meddling moms (Seimetz plays Infiniti's cruel yet complex stepmother Paula, in a world where children are rarely permitted to associate with their real families), to navigating shifting social dynamics with friends Shunammite (Rowan Blanchard), Becka (Mattea Conforti), and Huldah (Isolde Ardies).

From L to R: Rowan Blanchard, Mattea Conforti, Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday, and Isolde Ardies on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney/Russ Martin

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Infiniti and Halliday joked about the amount of material at their disposal when getting into character as The Testaments' core dyad. "Well, first we absorbed it all. Just absorbed it," Infiniti says with a smile, a welcome sight after watching her Agnes bludgeoned by shock after unsettling shock.

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"It was reading all the books, watching the show, and using our resources," Infiniti continues, counting "Bruce and Ann and [Elisabeth Moss], who's an executive producer." Infiniti says she and Halliday felt "empowered to take these characters and make them our own because they really gave us the space to create, and to be kind of unapologetic with our characters."

Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday as Agnes and Daisy on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney/Russ Martin

"I completely concur with Chase," Halliday says, a preview of the blossoming warmth between her character and Infiniti's. "We had a vat of information and a vat of resources that we leeched on, because we wanted to be as prepared as humanly possible stepping into this world. We didn't want to mess it up, and just wanted to do it justice."

With advisors like Miller, Dowd, and Moss, whom Dowd calls "the heart and soul of The Handmaid's Tale," it would be hard for Infiniti and Halliday to go wrong.

Mabel Li stares down her charges on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney/Russ Martin

Since June's departure from Gilead at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, Lydia's picked up a new sparring partner in Aunt Vidala, the second-in-command at Lydia's rigorous pre-marital prep school for girls. Like her imperious supervisor, Vidala rules with "an iron fist in a leather glove in a woolen mitten," as Lydia says of herself on the series, and in the novel.

Vidala is played by Mabel Li, who "avidly watched The Handmaid's Tale, and watched Ann just light up that screen in the incredible way that she does," Li says, compelling the humble Dowd to deny the compliment. Vidala hovers in the typical Aunt's way in the background of the first few episodes of The Testaments, but teases twists replete with "resentment," "deep betrayal," "shock, and trauma" to come.

Seimetz, who takes over lording duties from the Aunts whenever Agnes heads home from school, pulled from a disparate field of sources to step into Paula's unforgiving equestrian boots. The indie film veteran cites a range, from Faye Dunaway's iconic Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest ("I told them, 'I'm gonna do no more wire hangers'") to Atwood's bottomless bibliography.

She clearly didn't come to Atwood, late, as she proffers a point often made by the author herself when discussing The Handmaid's Tale and its sequel. "Everything that happens in that novel is based off history. When you're reading it, it feels so oddly not far from reality, yet it's terrifying, because it is reality in some time period or another. You can feel those things as a woman growing up in the world. You can feel the sort of remnants, or the very present force of these things," Seimetz says.

Amy Seimetz as Paula and Chase Infiniti as Agnes MacKenzie on 'The Testaments'Credit: Disney/Russ Martin

The Handmaid's Tale spared no sensitivities when diving into the cruelest treatment people like June, and even Lydia, experience at the hands of a totalitarian system bent on the total subjection of women. Though it takes place in a more delicate segment of Gilead society than the dregs of the handmaids, The Testaments shows that no one is truly safe.

"Agnes is such a special character, because you're getting an insight to see how this girl has grown up in a world where she has no perception of what it's like outside of the confines of her walls, and outside of the confines of Gilead," Infiniti reflects. She's unlike June and Lydia that way, but she's unlike Daisy, too, who doesn't in truth arrive in Gilead as a lost lamb, but an agent of destruction.

Daisy's parents in Toronto were involved in the Mayday resistance network that June connects with and ultimately leads significant portions of in The Handmaid's Tale. When they're killed in a targeted bombing, June plants her back in Gilead, hoping to usher in its downfall. But of course, she also hopes to connect with her daughter Hannah, whom Daisy may or may not cross paths with.

"I hope that what resonates with viewers is that sometimes we don't have a lot of options of what we can do, in terms of standing up for other people, or protecting other people," Halliday shares. "But if there's a way that you can use your voice to protect another person or advocate for another person who is more vulnerable than you, you should do that, because that is always the right choice to make."

Spoken like a true prodigy of June Osborne.

The Testaments airs new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.

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