Alexis Bledel Acted Her Upper Face Off in The Handmaid's Tale

-It's very lovely to see you here,
to see you looking so lovely,
because the show is very -- it's a very dark show.
-It's very dark. It's very intense, yeah.
-And for those who don't know, it's sort of set
in the dystopian future, sort of the near future,
which makes it even a little bit harder.
And this is sort of a male dominated society.
Uh, is it -- like, did it take so much out of you to do it?
-Oddly, no. It was, like, a great working experience.
I mean, it didn't feel the way it feels to watch it.
I have a really hard time watching it.
I feel very tortured at the end of an episode.
I have to, like, watch something else, like take a break.
But filming it was an incredible creative experience.
I mean, it was just so satisfying and lovely.
-That's great, and it's a fantastic cast, obviously.
-Yes. -You did have a --
I feel like you had a limitation on your character
that no one else did, because your character
is a gender traitor.
And for those who don't know,
gender traitors then have to wear these masks
over their mouth, which I would imagine
as an actor, is a bit -- a little bit limiting.
-Yeah, don't have the lower half of your face there.
-Yeah!
-It was an incredible challenge, actually.
I was so excited about it, oddly.
And I don't know, it was really freeing in a way, just to have,
you know, movement and just your, you know, eyes and looks
and -- to work with. -Yeah.
It looked like the top half of your face had been waiting
your whole life for that, because --
-I think it was the fear of being the weakest link
on such an amazing show. -Oh, that's interesting.
I never thought about that, but when you're watching
everybody else crush it, you must -- yeah, you --
-Yeah, you're kind of charged with that like,
"Don't mess this up." Like, you gotta --
-Yeah, 'cause someone -- look, on any cast,
someone's going to be the worst ones.
-I don't know, I mean, yeah, I think everyone on the show
is amazing, luckily, but, yeah,
it's definitely a very real fear.
-The other thing which I think helped your face acting,
which was so exceptional -- -[ Laughs ]
-For real, there are extreme close-ups on this show.
-The camera gets so close, it's not even a foot away
from your face sometimes.
I think I was looking at my lines once,
kind of just getting the lines just right, and I look up
and the camera's right there.
I'm like, whoa!
But he was like, "This -- yeah, this is what we're going to do."
I was like, "All right, all right,
"I love the look of the show.
Whatever you need to do, I'm going to be fine."
-And on that -- you know, obviously, the show
is hard to watch because of the subject matter.
When you watch it, is an extreme close-up as an actor
even harder to watch of yourself?
-Whew! I mean, yeah, it's an intense show
to watch anyway, so then, yeah, I think I'm glad
I'm not in every scene, because my scenes kind of come and go
and I can watch the rest of the narrative,
and I can enjoy everyone else's story line.
Especially, you know, toward the end of the first season,
I wasn't in a lot of it, and I was just dying
to know what happened, 'cause I didn't have those scripts.
-Of course.
-So, I really enjoyed those episodes.
-And this is really exciting, we were talking backstage.
You are going to be a season regular for season two...
-Yes. -...which is great.
[ Cheers and applause ] -I'm so excited.
-And...
it's especially great
not only because I was so invested in your character,
but a lot of characters on this show don't --
well, they're not going to make it to season two.
-Ooh, I know, it's so rough.
I can't believe I get to come back
because my character, um... -Yeah.
-...does not make it in the book.
So it's -- it's -- yeah, it's incredibly exciting.
Unexpected. So I'm -- yeah.
I can't wait to get back to work.
-When Elisabeth Moss was here, she was saying that
sort of the hat -- what do you guys call 'em?
-Bonnets. -Yeah, the bonnets.
That's a normal word that I should've known.
-Totally everyday thing, yes.
-Now, what does the future call those? Bonnets.
-[ Laughing ] -Interesting.
But she said one of the things --
it was actually difficult to find the other actors,
because it does -- unless you're straight on --
Was that true?
-It's completely true. We had a --
we had a scene where we had to kind of merge
with a bunch of other handmaids going to the Salvaging.
This really brutal scene.
And I had to find Lizzie as she walked up.
And you can't, yeah, you can't kind of sneak around that thing.
It's like a full covered -- -[ Laughs ] Yeah.
-So I had to make a very deliberate head movement
to find her. I had to time it out just right.
I was like, it was almost like a song.
I was just counting it off in my head.
I was like, "Lizzie --" and I messed it up like one time.
I was like, "no!" -[ Laughs ]
-I had to go back. -Yeah, 'cause they're so --
They're less like bonnets, and more like the things
dogs wear after a surgery. -They really are.
-Like they really are, like, limiting.
-Yeah, they're very extreme.
Just like a cone, actually. Yeah.
-So this show, obviously, is very different
from "Gilmore Girls."
Thankfully, because... I think.
[ Cheers and applause ] -It would have been --
It would have been such a bummer if,
when "Gilmore Girls" finally came back, it was like this.
And we'd have been like, "Oh, no!"
-Like, what happened? -What happened?
So much went wrong for these "Gilmore Girls."
But when you auditioned for the show,
which obviously was such a fantastic part,
such an important part of your career,
was it true that you had the flu when you auditioned
for "Gilmore Girls"?
-For "Gilmore Girls"? Yeah, I was very sick.
I was a student at NYU, and they kept calling me back
up to audition.
I think I went, like, six times.
And oddly, I wasn't, you know, a very seasoned actor at all.
I didn't know the process.
But this was actually unusual anyway.
And they -- I grew a tad bit impatient.
I was like -- I got a little --
I had a little attitude. -Uh-huh.
-And our boss really liked that a lot.
-[ Laughs ] -She's like, "That's our girl."
I was like, "Are you guys going to hire --
Are you going to bring me back again or..."
And she was like, "I like that, that's perfect."
I was like, "Okay." -That's great.
I do think that's probably not a lesson to teach other actors.
Like, you've got to go in there and be like,
"Tick tock, everybody,
I've got places to be." -Yeah.
-My career is highly unusual.
If anything, I've learned it's very, very strange.
-All right. Well, I'm glad it's worked out for you,
both on that show and this.

Alexis Bledel Acted Her Upper Face Off in The Handmaid's Tale

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