56 WINTER 2019 MOVIEMAKER.COM
TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF HULU / PHOTOFEST; BOTTOM RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPH BY DON STAHLpremiered at the 2018 Toronto International
Film Festival this past September. The irony
of us meeting under these conditions is that
significantly fewer people will ever see
Her Smell than tune in to any episode of
The Handmaid’s Tale. This fact lays bare one
of the most fascinating things about Moss and
her unique brand of modern celebrity—and
about the state of American independent film,
as well. The TV shows she stars in are ubiqui-
tous. The movies are strikingly small.
The present configuration—lead a popular
series over multiple seasons most months
of the year and shoot as many indie films
as possible while on hiatus—occupies every
minute of Moss’ time. Over the summer,
from the moment production on
Handmaid’s Tale wrapped, she shot four
features back to back: a crime picture based
on a comic book called The Kitchen, directed
by Straight Outta Compton writer
Andrea Berloff; Light of My Life, a drama
by and starring Casey Affleck; the hugely
anticipated new thriller Us from Get Out’s
Jordan Peele; and an eccentric biopic about
author Shirley Jackson by Madeline’s Madeline
director Josephine Decker. In the fall she
somehow found time to promote Her Smell at
TIFF and at the New York Film Festival, where
it played the illustrious main slate. And in
between it all she’s developing original work
as a producer, including Paul Harrill’s
Light From Light, set to premiere at Sundance.
This is like week six of the seemingly
endless shoot of The Handmaid’s Tale’s third
season. Because she not only stars as the lead
character but also serves as producer, Moss’
work does not end as it would for most ac-
tors, when she is not obliged to be on screen.
On set, she seems hands-on and fastidious,
slaving over her lines and blocking, con-
versing at length with directors about the
intentions of a scene. She suggests new ideas,
proposes alternatives to ones that aren’t
working; what if she tries this next take
backwards, she’ll ask, or enters from this side
instead of that way? She approaches every
shot as if she’s Orson Welles and this is her
Citizen Kane. This attitude makes for good
TV. It also, as you might expect, makes Moss
extraordinarily busy.
In her trailer, a stream of cigarette smoke
rising into the bitter sky, Moss fields my
questions with the patience of someone
more relaxed than she has any right to be.
I complain, jokingly, that the circumstances of
our interview make my job as journalist more
difficult: I can’t add the usual color about the
interesting outfit she’s wearing or the cool
café where we’ve met. She’s just in a trailer,
beside a soundstage, in a costume from the
wardrobe department. “I think this gives an
honest insight into my life,” she says, in mock
sympathy but in truth. “I don’t have time to
go to cafés. That’s not my life right now. If we
talk, we have to do it at work, because that’s
what I do—I work.”
On cue, Diane, Moss’ assistant, points to
her watch. It is time to return to set—some
five minutes after we left it, according to my
watch. Moss exhales a plume of smoke with
comic resignation. “That’s so sad,” she laughs.
“Maybe let’s stay five more minutes?” She fires
up another cigarette and asks me to roll.“SLOW BURN” TO STARDOM
Elisabeth Moss has been busy for almost
30 years. Born in Los Angeles to parents in
the music industry, she studied ballet as a
child at a school in the San Fernando Valley
and aspired to be a professional dancer. When
she was seven, her school mounted a produc-
tion, strangely, of The Sound of Music—“that
classic ballet,” she jokes about it now. Moss
was Gretl, the youngest of the Von Trapps. An
agent in the audience approached her mother
after the performance and suggested little
Elisabeth attend a few auditions. “My mom
asked me if I wanted to and I was like, ‘Yeah,’ ”
she remembers. “So I just started going to
auditions and I really liked it.”
There is some debate about her first role.
IMDb lists a pilot for an NBC drama about
female lawyers that was never picked up.
“What was that called? Not L. A. Law, but,
like ... fuck.” I consult my notes: It was called
Bar Girls. “Bar Girls! Yes!” She laughs at the
hazy memory. She was only a kid, after all.
“I don’t think that was the first thing I did.
I think the first thing I did was for Lifetime.
It was based on a Jackie whatshername
book, you know who I mean.” (She means
Jackie Collins.) “It was called... why am I
blanking on this? But Sandra Bullock played
my mom. I had to find her dead in a pool —
that was my big scene. Started out really light
really early. Sort of set the trajectory for my
career.” Minutes later, the title strikes her like
a thunderclap. She bolts up. “Lucky Chances!”
As it turned out, playing Sandra Bullock’s
daughter would be her luckiest chance for a
while. The early years of Moss’ filmographyGOLD MAID: MOSS DUCKED OUT OF A ROWDY CELEBRATION OF HER LATEST GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATION TO MEET US ON THE CHILLY TORONTO SET OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE