Samira Wiley Admits ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is More Scarily Relevant Than She’d Like

Hulu’s new hit show The Handmaid’s Tale is a little too on-the-nose than we’d like, even for star Samira Wiley.

The show centers on a dystopian future in which a right-wing religious group overthrows the government and inflicts strict gender roles on the community. Samira plays the main character Offred’s best friend Moira, who, so far, is only seen in flashbacks. And although the show (based on the book of the same name by Margaret Atwood) is meant to be a wild idea (think George Orwell’s 1984, the whole thing is just a little too realistic.

Samira told Elle,

“It’s a little more scarily relevant than we wanted it to be. Going in and out of filming, living in this world was interesting, because [the show] gives a real sense of where we started and how we ended up there. Where we are now, in the social climate we’re in, we’re not at the beginning and we’re not at the end. We’re somewhere in the middle, and that’s terrifying.”

Terrifying is definitely the word to describe it — both our current political climate and the show.

But Samira is a believer in the resistance and says,

“I don’t want to become complacent in the world that we’re living in. I think that we, as women, always need to remain vigilant… The power that we can have as a collective group of women should never be underestimated.”

She adds,

“We have to be vigilant. We cannot be complacent.”

Amen to that!