For eight years actors Elisabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski were among the cast that led us through The Handmaid’s Tale, which used Margaret Atwood’s novel as its starting point. We’ve now reached Season 6 (on Crave and Prime Video in Canada), the final season of the show, and the story is darker and more striking than ever.

The season begins right where we left off, with June (Moss) and Serena (Strahovski) in close quarters on a train full of Gilead refugees heading to Vancouver. While Serena seems to believe they can be on the same side, June is not about to let her guard down. The complexity of their relationship really starts off the season.

“It’s safe to say that this season, my takeaway from it is that it is inspiring, even though it is gruelling at the same time to watch the show,” Strahovski said. “And it always has an element of a hope, and perhaps more so than ever in this season as we follow June.”

“June’s always held the hope banner up for all of us audience members as we navigate our way through the show and through the times of our life.”

But heading into the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, anyone who has watched from Season 1 will see the unfortunate reality that oppression of women and the need to fight for women’s rights is more necessary than ever. Possibly even more so than when the series first premiered.

“It’s sad, but it’s amazing that this book has been relevant throughout the years, all the years that it has existed, and that it now has another life,” Strahovski said. “And each season it takes on a new life because art imitates life, and life imitates art.”

In a separate interview, Moss highlighted that it’s really the commitment “truthful” storytelling that enables The Handmaid’s Tale to still be so culturally relevant.

“I think what we’ve tried to do as producers and creators on the show is tell the stories of these people and these characters, and make them complicated, make them truthful,” Moss said. “And when we’re trying to be truthful, if we do our jobs right, it does reflect the world around us.”

“But that’s what Margaret did in that book in 1985, she was truthful about those characters, about their experiences, and so it was incredibly relevant. And then it was relevant 10 years later, 10 years after that, and it’s relevant in the 40th anniversary this year. And she laid the path for us and we’ve been lucky enough to keep walking it.”

Of course, a significant symbol has been the red Handmaid’s cloaks, which have been pulled from Atwood’s writing, and subsequently the TV show, and used as a real-life symbol in the fight for women’s rights, from protests in Washington, D.C., and beyond.

“I am honoured that people have taken that costume and they’re using it as a symbol of resistance, as a symbol of power,” Moss said. “There is a huge theme this season. … That dress that Gilead and the powers that be initially put those women in as a symbol of shame, the colour red being a symbol of shame, has become a symbol of resistance.”

“I feel so proud to wear that costume and I have since Season 1. It’s very meaningful to me, I feel powerful in it. I feel strong in it. It’s something that I respect very much. … So the fact that women and people around the world are using it to express their right to protest and their right to speak up for what they believe in, I don’t know how you speak about that except saying, what an incredible, humbling … honour it is to be in any small way a part of that.”

Elisabeth Moss directs first two, last two episodes of Season 6

While Moss has directed before on The Handmaid’s Tale, this season she had the task of directing the first two and last two episodes, which means she was particularly involved in how we’re sent off as the series ends.

“I could not believe I was getting to direct the final two episodes of this series,” Moss said. “There are so many incredible directors in this industry and on this show, and I … still can’t believe that the grownups let me do it.”

“On the other hand, it was also incredibly challenging. … It was the biggest season we’ve ever done. On paper, financially, it’s the biggest season we’ve ever done. … But luckily, with the support of our partners and with the support of our producers and our incredible crew, I think we did an unbelievable job.”

‘I probably will never watch the show again’

Moss went on to stress how much working on the show has “changed [her] life and career as an artist,” becoming a producer and a director, and learning how to be a “leader,” with this being her first time as number one on the call sheet.

But reflecting on becoming a mother herself while making this show, Moss identified that it has impacted how she looks at the events that take place in The Handmaid’s Tale.

“I didn’t realize how much it was going to affect my viewpoint of certain storylines on the show, and it’s just made it more emotional,” Moss said. “It’s harder for me to watch certain things. … I used to look at something, a scene involving June and Hannah, or someone and their child, and could go, ‘Oh, that’s a great performance. Wow, I’m so impressed. Oh, what a great scene.’ Now I can’t watch it. Now I just start crying.”

“I have a more personal, emotional relationship to certain things involving mothers and children, in a great, beautiful way, I think. It’s just all become so much more visceral. … I understood a lot of things on an emotional level, for sure, because I understand love and I understand that kind of desperation. … But it was perhaps more on a slightly intellectual level, now it’s very visceral.”

But Strahovski also admitted that the early episodes, in particular, are difficult for her to watch.

“It’s never as difficult to film it. Some scenes have been terrible to film, … any of the ceremony scenes in the earliest seasons, terrible. There’s no way around it, they’re awful,” Strahovski said. “But there’s something very different for me about performing and diving into the character and exploring that world as a artist and a performer, I guess, than watching it.”

“I have a really hard time watching it. … And in fact, when we were shown clips … from earlier seasons, I wanted to vomit in a bucket. I mean, I couldn’t even watch it. It’s too hard to watch Serena in the early days be so hard and so bitter and so brutal and cruel. … I vowed, I probably will never watch the show again. It’s too much. I haven’t seen it since it first aired. But it is an important show. And of course, I think it is something for all of us to see despite how gruelling it is.”

‘Gilead has not left Toronto’

As we’ve reached the beginning of the end of The Handmaid’s Tale on screen, this isn’t the end of the show’s legacy, even specifically in Canada.

If you’re from Toronto and you think you’ll miss seeing The Handmaid’s Tale filming in and around the city, there’s more to come, with sequel series The Testaments filming in the same location.

“I’m afraid you haven’t gotten rid of us yet,” Moss said. “Gilead has not left Toronto.”