The Inner Framework of Season Five of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: A Conversation with Creator and Showrunner Bruce Miller

This interview was conducted in April 2023.

In Season Five of The Handmaid's Tale, June faces consequences for killing Commander Waterford while struggling to redefine her identity and purpose. The widowed Serena attempts to raise her profile in Toronto as Gilead's influence creeps into Canada. Commander Lawrence world with Nick and Aunt Lydia as eh tries to reform Gilead and rise in power. June, Luke and Moira fight Gilead from a distance as they continue their mission to save and reunite with Hannah.

There's a change in the wind as June begins to taste a new sense of freedom and independence. It's heavy and hard work, but she's on a mission - and we're here for it. The creative team behind The Handmaid's Tale doesn't waste a second of screen time, every blemish, every creak, every moment of silence serves a purpose, down to the needle drop on Billie Eilish's "Bury a Friend". And as season six approaches in the near and distant future - there seems to be a glimmer of hope for June.

The show's beloved creator and showrunner, Bruce Miller, returns to Script and talks about his love for the show (he is the show's #1 fan, without a doubt), being on the nose with music, his creative collaboration with Elisabeth Moss, the importance of promoting his team, and more!

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Season five - I don't know how you guys do it in terms of expanding the world and character building from this wonderful piece of text that Margaret Atwood wrote. Plus, the journey of June and the twists and turns that she takes all for the search for survival and freedom.

Bruce Miller: What's it like to be poor June? It is a good tale. [laughs]

Sadie: Yeah, it is. What is your process in establishing the framework for writing the first episode and season finale episode?

Bruce: Well, I think in some ways, it's taking advantage of the most basic thing about having a showrunner, because my job is to be 100% buried in every one of them. So, if I do that job well, on a day-to-day basis, when you get further in the future, I know them more intimately than anybody else. Because I've shepherded each one all the way through to the end and made decisions all the way through and rewritten the scripts all the way through. So, I think that the benefit of having a showrunner is the brain of 'Ooh, I did this since season one, we could do this again,' that part of it.

And I think that having a little bit of a puppet master is what kind of makes TV cumulative. It adds to itself every week. It doesn't just lay there. It's another thing every week. I think there are two things that really make that possible and the first is being a big fan of my own show. I really enjoy watching, especially my actors, and seeing the production design and appreciating the hair and makeup and wardrobe and all that - but my actors make so much more, everybody does, but my actors make so much more out of each moment that what I'm literally doing is letting them write the final season. I mean, you just go back to the stuff that you didn't put in the script and Margaret didn't put in the book. And no one else did - it's Lizzie [Moss]. And Lizzie did it by making a tiny little decision here and then adding it to that and by keeping your head in that character and keeping that character on the up and up.

So, if you're a fan of your own show, you can go back and watch and really enjoy and get into kind of, ‘What do I want to happen?’ Because in some ways my job is like you and your friends sitting around going you this to happen on Game of Thrones…it's exactly the same conversation. But that works much better when it's a show you like. It just does. And so I've been on lots of shows where I love the people, and I find something to love in the show and everything, but it doesn't hit me in the same way that Handmaid's does. I only make it for me, and Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang, and Lizzie and Warren [Littlefield. Beyond that, I don't know what you like, I'm just trying to make it cool for me. I think that that's the first thing is trying to be a fan of your own show, which is, how do you do that?

And the second thing, honestly, is the world that Margaret created. It's so rich, that, in fact, I'm still just playing out those threads. In some ways, when you say, ‘How do you go back?’ and I'm not going back, I'm playing through really a simple musical set of notes. And there's only one note per season if I do a good job. I don't have a great memory in general, so I'm pretty reductive. I like the Friends model, this is the episode about this, this is the episode about that. And it's a good way to remember. So, you can learn a lot if you keep saying to yourself, this is the show about the Handmaid over and over and over again, that gives you a point of view, that gives you where your story begins, when she becomes a Handmaid and where it ends when she stops being Handmaid.

What I tried to do is not think of the zillion things this season is about. But look back to Margaret's original work and look for one of the two things, because luckily, Margaret's work in this particular case is so spare that it has tons of themes that you can lay on it in a wonderful way. So, the show is about motherhood. The show is about womanhood. The show is about misogyny. Each one of them could be a whole series. So, I think that what you want to do is say, ‘OK, all of those are coming from Margaret's original thing. We can make one season about motherhood and one season about misogyny, and they're all still part of that whole kind of Handmaid story.’

So, in some ways, her fertile storytelling brain sometimes overshadows the fact that she also is structurally a brilliant storyteller, so that when you have someone who's built a story like that you're sitting on a foundation that makes sense on every tiny little level. And so, I think her imagination is lauded, absolutely, but her kind of on-the-ground gritty brilliance as a writer, moment to moment is so delicious, and also shows you that it does have legs. It makes it have legs as a show because she's burying so many little pieces of gold in there. And it isn't by fucking accident…It's on purpose.

Sadie: Yeah, absolutely. And the way that she's able to convey so much thematically in so very few words…

Bruce: I love that. It's the poet in her. And that works well, because I get to look good. Because I write stuff that you think is really profound. But it's Lizzie, or Yvonne [Strahovski], or Joe Fiennes, making it sound profound. Margaret has to do it completely on her own, but I get a little bit of help. And I also get Margaret. So, all of those things kind of boost me up, so I get the illusion of writing something brilliant when really I just wrote something that Lizzie could make brilliant, which is a completely different thing.

Sadie: And speaking of Lizzie, she's also directed both the first episode and season finale of this season, what discussions were the two of you having as creative collaborators, with her directly at the center of it all?

Bruce: Our creative conversations are often and brief. I think that's helped us both, and that very much is her teaching me about how to have those conversations in a modern world. I would have sat down at a table and spoken to someone or had lunch once a week for a long time. And Lizzie is not around enough. She is doing a movie here and a movie there. And she likes her gypsy life. So, when we first started to work on the project together, my conversations with Lizzie, she was in Australia. So, you're in Australia, and you're only available from five to 6 am and from eight to 10 pm. That's it. And I think that what she taught me is a text here, a five-minute conversation there, a little email, we can work together much more closely. If I'm comfortable with shorter pieces. I'm very comfortable with shorter pieces now. And we work together incredibly closely, even barring the distance, and barring the fact that a lot of those conversations are kind of stilted now.

So, our conversations, when she was an actor, were always holistic about the show. I think she's always thought about it in a way. And it's a little easier for her because it is from her character's point of view. But the thing about Elisabeth Moss as an actor is, she has done this a lot. So, it's not like she thinks she's June. She was Peggy, she was Zoey, she was these iconic characters that you're not living for six months when you're making a movie. She's living for 10 years. And she still didn't turn into that person. So, does she have distance? Yes, she absolutely has distance from her character, the same way I have distance from Fred Waterford. The connection I have to Fred makes me feel dirty and awful. I'm glad I don't have 100% connection with him. I'm glad I can let it go. She can certainly let her June-ness go. And she's a very facile actor.

She's also become a director now. And really, from the very beginning, I thought that would be a good idea and was waiting for her to have the same idea. And she's incredibly talented as a director, that's completely above and separate from being an excellent actor. She certainly directs from the strength of being an actor and understanding that part of it, but across the board, she is talented and incredibly professional. And she's only done this a few times. And I got to see her do it the first time, and the first time she did it, she shot for seven days, and then we shut down for three and a half months. And then she finished shooting her episode. 

The movement of her to director with felt to me like an amoeba, it was just exactly the way that it was supposed to slide. And when you see her do it it's the same level of focus she can bring to being an actor that she can bring to being the director. And that level of focus is in her, kind of what makes her a generational talent.

Sadie: You’d think she’s been directing for 30 years just from those two episodes alone. And there’s this softness to how the camera is moving and what she’s showing us. It could have gone in any direction, especially in that very last scene when she sees Serena. And a very gentle moment that you're like, ‘OK, what's going to happen?’

Bruce: She's got a light touch. Yeah. And she's got a very light touch as an actor, and to have a light touch and be very naturalistic is a really cool combination. So, what she does is she kind of plays a person, really grounded, but that person has a light touch.

Sadie: The music and the sound design and how those two blend together to be pivotal pieces in the world-building, especially for mood and tone. There's wonderful moments where you're using songs that juxtapose a scene or a feeling and especially what you're doing in Gilead and then that ending of the season finale with that Billie Eilish song, it’s so perfect, it's so very much on the nose, but it's so perfect that you'd need that release. What was your process of working with your music and sound departments?

Bruce: Well, I am in awe of them all. Just to start with, it all kind of starts with Adam Taylor really who's the composer. The whole sound team drives where the songs and the music end up coming from. And he's part of that team. So, on some shows, it's like music, but our show, it's kind of music plus sound design, plus atmospheric, they all kind of come together and you don't want them to be fighting each other. He's very mindful of working with the other departments.

The chosen music comes from lots of different places, the songs, the chosen music, for me, my point of view is it's what's going on? It's the song unbidden that comes into June's head, you know, that song when you're kissing some boy in high school and this song comes in and, ‘ Oh, dear God, how? Why?’ [laughs] June has a little bit of that. Why is she thinking about the Breakfast Clu bin Gilead? When she escapes and she's got music that she remembers, and she's got certain people who she liked a lot. And we always think about, did she hear that from her mom? Where did she hear this?

But mostly for me, I just want to underline the moment and make it more fun. I don't have that many tools, honestly. I've got sounds and sights. And that's it. So, I might as well use them as much as possible. I try to be mindful about what you're going to hear and mindful about what you're going to see. And that's basically all I have. 

The thing that you said, a couple of super interesting things, the Billie Eilish song is actually the first time we've ever used a song that is after our fictional creation of Gilead where we stopped…all of our feminist heroes got killed. And so, I always decided music kind of stopped there for June because she was in Gilead. Now she's out, though. So, this was a song.

We went back and forth, Lizzie and I, and that as a plot point, not that it matters to anybody, literally. But that song is too new and what does that say and how does that feel? And the other aspect is, listen, with what you said about being on the nose, that there's a difference. Look at the expression on the nose. If you're aiming for the nose, it's where you want to be. [laughs] So where I always have tried to go is, ‘Is that stupid, or perfect because it's on the nose?’ What I just tried to do is take the judgment out of that. And You Don’t Own Me in the first episode, it seems so perfect and on the nose. We had 40 other songs that all seem perfect and on the nose. 

There are lots of songs in the show at the beginning of the songs - all songs I chose. I sweat over everything. As I've moved along, I gradually started to let Maggie [Phillips] and the directors of the episodes put in songs, the editors will put in songs. And sometimes even though I didn't know the song or like it, I would leave it in because kind of the consensus was against me, because otherwise, it turns into Bruce Miller music playing time.

Lizzie puts in songs, and she has very different tastes than I do. And also different things move her then move me. So, I didn't know the Billie Eilish song and I still kind of think, 'Eh, it's OK.' But she thought it was spectacular, and almost everybody else did. So, I was like, 'You're right.' I think it's good, but I didn't really think it was over the moon. But there's certainly lots of moments I think are over the moon that no one else cares about at all. But if you can find those moments and someone does care, and that does help someone else latch on to the thing.

You were saying at the end of the season, June and Serena had a face-to-face - Lizzie and I spent two weeks choosing which three shots we were going to have, because they have lots of different looks on their faces. What are you going to tell? So, yeah, it feels a little OCD when you're doing it like you're a crazy person. And then I talked to you, and it actually mattered. And I know that I could have made you think they hate each other; by music, I could have made you think they hate each other. I could have made you think the next thing was going to be one spitting in the other one's face. And so, when you get to that moment, you have 50 choices, 60 choices, you can make anything you want out of that. One of the things that made me understand the scene was Billie Eilish. I understood the scene because of that. And so it's like, well, don't pull it out. The audience deserves the same experience.

The other thing you have to think about nowadays is people are going to watch it over and over and over again. So eventually, you're going to hear the music. The music I think has to be a little more thought out as being in the front. Because people who liked the show, you know, when I was a kid, you could watch it once on reruns. And that was it. So, the stuff is only going past you once, right? And there's an aspect to that in the show that you have to put in music that the first time you hear it, even if you don't know it, there's an effect, because otherwise, it only works for the people who already have an association. And who knows what their association is. 

So, you kind of want to be able to grab everybody, but it also has to last 20 years from now when someone's binge-watching the show on a phone. It still has to work. So, you kind of want to think about, ‘OK, what for me worked the first time and the 500,000th time?’

Sadie: 100%. You recently elevated two of your executive producers/writers, Eric Tuchman ad Yahlin Cahng, to be co-showrunners for the sixth season. Can you talk to the importance of passing that baton and what you hope the final season will say or do for the audience, but also for your whole creative team in front and behind the camera?

Bruce: Ah, well, I think the last part of that question of what it means to them is really why those people were promoted to that position. And it's just the position they've been in, in the position they've been playing. Eric has been there since the first moment. And Yahlin came in the second season, because she was working the first season on some other show, who knows what else. [laughs] And so I lured her away from there. And it's our show. That's the whole point. 

And I think that the hope was, that this would change the way things work, very little I mean, I want them to have more responsibilities, and to be able to do the things that they normally do. Going into season six, I think there were a lot more challenges. So having more people at the top is very, very, very helpful. Lizzie is also now at the top. It's like if we can divide and conquer. Now we don't have to do things together. We don't have to get on a phone call together. If she trusts me to talk to this person, I trust her of course to talk to that person. And I have that with Eric and Yahlin as well, and my whole staff.

It's nice to be able to pull more people up to have the title that's kind of commensurate with their work. Elisabeth Williams, she's our production designer became a producer last year. And the one thing I told her is, ‘it's not a title, it's a job dude.’ And she all of a sudden is working her ass off. And not that she wasn't before, but there's all this other stuff that I kept saying, ‘You got to be used to being bad again, get used to sucking again and failing.’

But to come to the end of this and to be able to do it on our terms and kind of on our story terms...going into season six with so many of the people who were there in season one, so many of the crew, who worked half a year and then found another job for half a year, but always came back to me. So, you can make a season six that really is a group effort, because everybody is coming up and having more responsibility. 

Season Five of The Handmaid's Tale is available to watch on Hulu.