“The Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood on her new sequel, “The Testaments” – CBS News

Even in case you would in no scheme heard of “The Handmaid’s Story,” its Emmy receive for Simplest Drama became clearly a colossal deal. It picked up eight Emmys for Hulu in 2017.

And when Margaret Atwood, the author of the 1985 book that inspired the TV converse, made her formulation to the stage carrying “handmaid” purple, the applause – a standing ovation – spoke volumes.

In Atwood’s new, handmaids are in actual fact sex slaves, forced to hold children for infertile couples amongst the vitality elite in Gilead, the totalitarian dystopia the US had change into after being taken over by Christian zealots.

The dark figure slapping “Handmaid” indispensable particular person Elisabeth Moss in season 1? Atwood, in a frightening cameo.

Correspondent Martha Teichner went with Atwood to the Toronto church health club where the scene became shot. The capture became filmed multiple cases. “Me slapping Elisabeth, they’d to utilize shooting it, because I wasn’t doing it vigorously enough!” Atwood laughed.

When requested her inspiration for the handmaids’ outfits, Atwood replied, “The concealment of the body, #1, and the limitation of the body, number 2, so varied of us can’t uncover you, nonetheless you additionally can’t uncover varied of us.

“So, that, and the Old Dutch Cleanser kit from the 1940s,” she added. “A vision from my childhood.”

Out of doorways the church, Atwood is identified by early life attending day camp. At 79, she is Canada’s most infamous residing author. She’s published 60 books, nonetheless “The Handmaid’s Story” has overshadowed the others. In English, or no longer it’s sold extra than eight million copies.

She began the book in West Berlin in 1984: “A symbolic year thanks to Orwell, and the scheme in which may most certainly most certainly I be so corny as to hold begun ‘The Handmaid’s Story’ in that year?  I could most certainly most certainly no longer support it!”

“What made you admire to must write it?” requested Teichner.

“So, there I’m in West Berlin surrounded by the wall, and I’m visiting varied totalitarian regimes in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and Poland. So, for occasion, Ceaușescu in Romania made a regulations that females needed to hold four babies, and they’d to hold a pregnancy test each month. And in the event that they weren’t pregnant, why no longer?”

Within the book, and the tv converse, each atrocity, no matter how unpleasant, needed to hold took residing someplace in proper lifestyles. Atwood stated, “It’s no longer me who made this stuff up; the human proceed made it up, sadly.”

“And did you completely intend ‘The Handmaid’s Story’ to be a warning?”

“What does it matter what I completely meant or no longer? It is a warning.”

“So, you felt the must originate this warning?”

“Simply because I even hold in no scheme believed it’s going to’t happen here. I’ve in no scheme believed that. And increasingly of us are joining me in that lack of belief.”

Starting in 2017, females all over the sphere began taking to the streets dressed as Handmaids, in the conclusion that fiction became indeed turning into reality, especially the limitations of females’s rights. On the present time, if you uncover the costume, what it capacity. It’s leaped out of Atwood’s book into our politics.

Atwood stated, “I create no longer if reality be told quiz things. I make educated guesses about possibilities. Nonetheless I’m no longer a prophet. If I had been any excellent at gambling, I would attain that. Be plenty richer!”

For added than 30 years, she’s spent her summers on Pelee Island in Lake Erie. The southernmost level in Canada, it’s a necessary sanctuary for migratory birds, and he or she helps to pay for conservation efforts on the island.

Atwood in actual fact lived in the woods as a toddler alongside with her household. Her father became an entomologist. “He became finding out infestations, things that residing off great numbers of bushes to die,” she stated. “We had been formulation up in northern Quebec. After which we had been formulation up north of Lake Superior.”

Teichner requested, “When did you utilize you wished to be a author?”

Atwood stated, “I made up my tips that I became a author. It sounds admire a abnormal thing to claim, nonetheless I made up my tips I became one after I became 16.:

She’s performed diverse writing on Pelee Island. Why is it this kind of legit residing to put in writing?  “Nobody calls!” she replied. 

She wrote a pair of of her most up-to-date book, a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Story,” on the island. “The Testaments” can be published on Tuesday, with an initial print dart of half of 1,000,000 copies. 

The book’s commence, in London, can be streamed to over 1,300 cinemas across the sphere.

And can also Atwood give us any hints? “Every person is aware of from book one which Gilead ends,” she stated. “Nonetheless we do no longer know the scheme. Nonetheless we’re a bit closer to sparkling how.”

“Is there hope in the second book?” Teichner requested.

“Tons of hope,” she laughed. “Heaps and hundreds hope.”

When Teichner requested, “In this total process and the explosion of ‘The Handmaid’s Story’ and its ripples in culture, what are you most joyful with?” Atwood replied, “I’m Canadian, Martha. We do no longer attain joyful with!” 

What attain you attain?  “Less embarrassed by!” she laughed.

     

READ AN EXCERPT:  “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood

    

For added knowledge: 

• “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio codecs, accessible by strategy of Amazon
• “The Handmaid’s Story” by Margaret Atwood (Anchor), in Hardcover, Paperback, and Graphic Unusual codecs, accessible by strategy of Amazon
• “The Handmaid’s Story” TV series on Hulu (Official residing)
• margaretatwood.ca (Official residing)

      

Sage produced by David Rothman.