Entertainment
How did Covid impact filming of The Handmaid’s Tale?
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One of the most acclaimed shows on TV is back, with The Handmaid’s Tale returning to screens in the UK for its fourth season this evening.
It’s been a long time coming, with a two-year gap between the end of the third season in 2019.
The show was one of the many TV and film projects impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, with the restrictions pushing back filming on the hit show.
Production had only just begun when it was shutdown due to the pandemic. While it was originally intended to arrive last autumn, Hulu pushed back the release date to 2021 as a result.
After a long delay, filming is thought to have resumed in Toronto last September.
The drama’s showrunner Bruce Miller previously discussed the difficulties during a virtual TCA panel for the show back in February.
‘Honestly the biggest change is it was difficult to get our cast into Canada to shot,’ Handmaid’s showrunner Bruce Miller admitted during today’s virtual TCA panel for the show [via Deadline].
Filming in Canada proved to be an issue too once the filming resumed, with the country shutting its borders with the US following a rise in cases and key workers forced to quarantine for 14 days.
‘We had to keep people out of episodes simply because they didn’t have enough time in their schedule,’ Bruce said.
‘I mean, people are very kind to come up and fly for a day’s worth of work in Canada from anywhere. So many of our cast members like Clea DuVall, these people who work very hard on other shows. So that was the biggest change.’
Speaking about how things had to be adapted to deal with the difficult situation, the showrunner said: ‘Definitely, a ton of things had to be changed in the show. Just the practical realities of producing and making the show on the ground were very very difficult, but the people in front of the camera, for the most part, we tried ….to protect that space.’
‘We reduced the number of people in scenes and locations, like where we decided to shoot was a very big question because sometimes we couldn’t get things,’ the showrunner and executive producer stated as his fellow EPs Moss and Warren Littlefield looked on and nodded.
‘Sometimes we had five people in front of the camera, sometimes we could have 20 people in front of the camera. So, we were constantly the entire season making adjustments to the script and the story.’
While the show took a while to return for its fourth season, the new instalments won’t be the last we see. It was announced back in December that there will be a fifth season of the drama.
The Handmaid’s Tale season four begins on Sunday June 20 at 9pm on Channel 4. The first three seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale are available to watch on Amazon Prime Video and on All 4.
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