...we can’t get enough of a good on-screen villain. Someone
we love to hate and hate to love. And while film history is crowded
with them, admittedly mostly male, there are some sharply brilliant
females who delightfully challenge the notion that a woman needs
to be nice. Think Miranda Priestly, Cersei Lannister, Regina George.
And now, Serena Waterford. The antagonist of dark drama The
Handmaid’s Tale will go down in the hall of fame as one of the most
brilliantly nuanced evildoers of the streaming era. So when Yvonne
Strahovski walks through the door of our New York City loft set, all
smiles, politeness and handshakes, it’s disarming. The real woman
behind the complex character, developed over several seasons of
the cult series, is warm and witty, sharing stories of below-freezing
Canadian winters at her temporary home in Toronto where she’s
midway through filming season three (layering puffer jackets under
her infamous teal dress), and sharing pictures of her five-month-old
baby boy who she’s away overseas from for the first time.
Dressed in nondescript skinny jeans and a
grey sweatshirt, Strahovski is bare-faced and
fresh-eyed despite her juggling the broken sleep
of a new mum with a demanding work schedule.
The Sydney-raised actor’s Aussie accent is
barely perceptible, dulled from living in the
States for 12 years, since moving to LA in 2007.
After stints as CIA agent Sarah Walker in spy
drama series Chuck, serial killer florist Hannah
McKay in Dexter, and back to CIA agent in the
bonus season of 24 , in 2017 she landed the part
of Waterford in the American dystopian drama
based on author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same
name. She couldn’t have predicted the significance the series
would take on. But playing out against a backdrop of political
unrest in the US in the wake of the Trump election, the role quickly
became career-defining, with Strahovski scooping up Critics’
Choice, Golden Globe and Emmy award nominations for her
portrayal of a former religious right activist complicit in constructing
a terrifyingly brutal patriarchy, a role which she plays with a searing
rawness that humanises evil in the most compelling of ways.
“I do feel that with any kind of villainous character, you have to
have that element in there,” says Strahovski. “We’re all born
innocent and people, like Serena, somehow find themselves on
these journeys where they go through so much to wind up in a bitter,
malicious place. That’s the kind of stuff I’m interested in – where is
the humanity in this? What makes this character make these heinous
decisions? Because to them it’s not necessarily heinous... I always
saw her as incredibly emotionally scarred from day one – there
was a huge sense of sadness and bitterness there for me to tap
into.” Observing human behaviour, trying to reflect the grey areasand creating a balance in her work is where Strahovski finds a
feeling she describes as joy. “All of us as humans are flawed –
some of us hide it better than others but it’s nice when you have
a script that reflects that. You can navigate your way through a
character and there’s so much between the lines you can work with
and decide as a performer what you’re going to show and not
show and to what extent. That journey you take the audience on,
that to me is the most thrilling part of it.”
Australian director Kim Farrant perfectly sums up the general
reaction to seeing Strahovski in her element on screen for the first
time: “I saw The Handmaid’s Tale and I thought ‘Who the fuck is
that? She’s incredible!’” Without realising she was a fellow
Australian, Farrant was struck with her brilliance as an actor and
ability to portray coldness and cruelty interspersed with moments of
“heartbreaking vulnerability”. When it came time to cast for a key
role in her film Angel Of Mine, a seminal Australian thriller about a
mother (played by Strahovski) whose child is stalked by another
woman, Strahovski was a serendipitous choice to star opposite
Swedish actor Noomi Rapace. “I was glued to The Handmaid’s
Tale series around the time we were casting,” says Farrant. “Then
her name came up in a list. I didn’t realise it was
the same person until someone mentioned it...
We got very lucky.”
“We basically met over FaceTime while I was
in Toronto and she was in Australia prepping for
the film,” says Strahovski, of her first conversation
with Farrant. It had been almost three years since
she’d been back in the country so the prospect of
filming a project in Melbourne was “bizarre”.
“What was more bizarre was that I was playing
an Australian for the first time in over a decade!”
she laughs. But the pull of working with Farrant
was enough to get her Down Under. Collaborating with women is
proving a common and desirable storyline for Strahovski who
requested a “strong female photographer” for her first ELLE cover
shoot and stars alongside Elisabeth Moss and a talented cast of
female actors in The Handmaid’s Tale. “It’s definitely something I’m
conscious of. Getting to work with Kim was definitely a selling point
for me – the fact that it was a female director was really appealing.
I’m very grateful to be a part of a show like The Handmaid’s Tale
with such a female-driven storyline and I’ve got such a great
character to get into, so the bar is set pretty high. That’s why this film
was so nice to work on as it’s as equally female-saturated.”
When Strahovski shared the news that she and her husband,
actor and producer Tim Loden, were expecting their first child, at a
time when pregnancy for many women means having to step out of
their career and, for female actors, stepping off the screen, Farrant
didn’t miss a beat. “I have to take my hat off to the producers and
Kim, who knew I was pregnant going into it and were still willing to
take that chance,” says Strahovski. “There’s a lot of talk about
women’s rights – we’re really at the forefront of the conversation in >“ We
ARE ALL
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