“The Handmaid’s Tale” showrunners Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang discussed similarities between the dystopian series and America under the Trump administration.
Showrunners for “The Handmaid’s Tale” lamented Americans not heeding the dystopian series’ “warning” about authoritarianism with the re-election of President Donald Trump.
Ex-CNN reporter Oliver Darcy spoke with Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang for the “Status” newsletter on Sunday to discuss the “striking similarities” between the fictional country Gilead and America under the Trump administration.
Many liberal critics have drawn parallels between the two since the show’s premiere in 2017 during Trump’s first term, and Tuchman told Darcy he was surprised by how relevant the series has remained since then. However, he mourned how women now have “fewer rights” despite the show’s message.
“No, I don’t think any of us could have predicted how closely the show would maintain its relevance and continue to reflect real events,” Tuchman said. “The series has been called a cautionary tale about what can happen when power is abused and people’s rights and freedoms are stripped away.”
He added, “But that warning was ignored, apparently, by the majority of voters, and Roe v. Wade was overturned. Women in our country have fewer rights now than when we started production in 2016.” The series is based on the 1985 book of the same name by Margaret Atwood.
The showrunners insisted they never intentionally made political statements on the show and any connections only came from them trying to be “authentic” about “life in an oppressive regime.”
“The fact that their struggles on the show can sometimes feel eerily relevant to the real world is the result of us trying to write honestly about power, resistance, and how fragile our democracy and freedom are,” Tuchman said.
As an example, Chang pointed to a scene of the lead character June, played by Elizabeth Moss, being separated from her young daughter and connected it to Trump “separating families along our own border” in 2017, though he said the scene was written before he heard that news.
Chang closed his portion of the interview by commenting about the show’s depiction of how easily democracy can backslide even in America.
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“It is chilling,” Chang said. “It’s also true—democracies backslide and fail all the time. Seventy percent of the world’s population lives in an autocracy. In our show, America as we know it was just this exceptional, temporary, extremely fragile experiment. Living in the world of Gilead imaginatively for this many years, I’m actually shocked that American democracy has lasted for so long.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Hulu for comment.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” premiered its sixth and final season on Hulu on April 8.
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