Bruce Miller, Showrunner of The Testaments (2026)

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[00:01:20] Hmm? Ah! Hmm. The coming of age part of that. It's like we talk about coming of age movies. We talk about, you know, I play songs from lots of movies from the 80s, all that kind of stuff.

[00:01:37] And it's funny, you know, they're coming of age movies. It's the most fucking powerful force in the world coming of age. We make fun of it. We have all sorts of little fun shows about it. It is the most powerful force in the world and these girls are going through it. And obviously the men in Gilead and the power structure are terrified of that power.

[00:01:55] Hey, everybody. Welcome to our podcast. I'm Daphne. And I'm Wendy. And I'm Jason. And this is Handmaid's Tale Podcast: The Testaments.

[00:02:22] This week, we are thrilled to be chatting with The Testaments showrunner, Bruce Miller. Before we get started, Bruce, we just want to thank you so much for an incredible first season of The Testaments. You created another hit show. Congratulations. Congratulations. It's the biggest group project in the world. But thank you very much. Yeah, it is so much fun that people like it as much as I like it.

[00:02:52] So, you know, that doesn't often happen. But it's been a pleasure. The actors and the crew were amazing making it. The crew was mostly the Handmaid's Tale crew. But the actors were all new and they were, I don't know if you've seen interviews with them, but they're delightful. They are. Yeah, we're hoping to talk with Rowan Blanchard next week. Actually, we might be able to do that. So we're excited. It's okay. She'll walk all over all three. I'm sure she will.

[00:03:22] She's actually, Shuna might have been the favorite character of our listeners. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't get a chance to listen to the feedback episodes. I listened to the other ones because I didn't want to have people ask, is Daisy Nicole for two and a half hours? Yeah. But it's very nice to have another show to talk about. And it was very nice of Margaret to consider me for the gig.

[00:03:53] Oh, that's great. So that is a great segue into first question. What excited you the most about bringing the Testaments to TV after spending so many years in the world of Gilead? And how different is it compared to making The Handmaid's Tale? Well, I was excited because, in fact, we hadn't seen very much of Gilead.

[00:04:21] I mean, that's the whole point of Handmaid's is that the point of view is tiny. I mean, the whole first season is not only in her house. It's mostly in her room. So the restricted point of view of The Handmaid's Tale is kind of what makes it a scary show. So here I was fascinated by the idea of a completely different restricted point of view. So restricted for different reasons.

[00:04:46] And some of the things that I liked about it was that June came from a very free place and she had all that freedom stripped from her. But these young women are at kind of a time in their life when they are pushing and trying to be free. So at the same time they're pushing out, people are pushing back on them. But they, you know, with June, you feel like when you met her, she's had a couple of hard shots. She's been through life. These girls are before that.

[00:05:13] These girls are living what they consider their good, happy, brief teenage years. And so we see what's coming, but they don't. So I like the idea of being able to see a different, like, you know, when I think of, when you guys think of the TV show, you think of a whole world. But it's actually not a whole world. It's like a big piece of plywood with three holes in it. And inside those three holes are world. But the rest of it isn't world. It's nothing. It's empty. That's the whole idea.

[00:05:41] And so, you know, being able to kind of go and touch into this world and say, oh, well, let's hear what. But it's still, it's a little tiny hole. You're just getting a sense of what else is out in Gilead. That was really fun. I mean, especially because it's nice to see how they treat the people they want to treat the best. You know, it shows you kind of misogyny on the top of the heap is as bad as misogyny on the bottom of the heap. They're just more upfront about it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:09] That, I mean, I wonder if in making this show, you kind of wanted to capture the fan base of The Handmaid's Tale and do something pleasing to them, but also make sure to create something completely new. And so the fact that you hadn't shown this area of it really lent itself to that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, the way you put it is exactly the way I have to avoid putting it to myself because otherwise I'll completely freeze.

[00:06:39] You know, if you're trying to come up with all those, okay, it has to be interesting. It has to bring back the audience. So I really just tried to make a sequel to the television show based on the book, you know, and try not to kind of think much beyond that. You hope, of course, all those things are true. But honestly, all of that stuff are brushstrokes that come on top of very basic storytelling. And I'm working on the basic storytelling. I love that all these people are out here putting icing on the cake, but I really am a cake person. I make cake.

[00:07:07] I mean, one of the things that I find so interesting about this show that I really didn't expect, even though I read the book, is it feels like a teenage coming-of-age story, but it's wrapped in this disturbingly unjust, oppressive world of Gilead. And I wonder if you, like, agree with that characterization, and if so, were you confident from the start that all those elements would combine well together? Ask the beginning of your question again.

[00:07:35] I just think what was surprising to me about it is coming in and hearing Remy Bond singing Summer Song and seeing these teenage girls, and it just felt like, wait a minute, this is a teenage girl coming-of-age story. But yet it has that creepy Gilead wrongness about it. But you get both satisfied on both levels, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I mean, I kind of think I want to be in the same position that Gilead is in,

[00:08:02] which is being handed these incredibly powerful beings, these young women. And I think Gilead is in agreement with me that they're incredibly powerful. They want to stomp on them. They're terrified of them. I'm incredibly interested to see what happens because, you know, I have a 21-year-old daughter. It's not so easy to stomp on them. You know, big talk, Gilead. And so what you want to do is see, okay, you're going to come try to stomp on them? Stomp on them.

[00:08:32] But the coming-of-age part of that, it's like we talk about coming-of-age movies. We talk about, you know, I play songs from lots of movies from the 80s, all that kind of stuff. And it's funny. You know, they're coming-of-age movies. It's the most fucking powerful force in the world, coming-of-age. We make fun of it. We have all sorts of little fun shows about it. It is the most powerful force in the world, and these girls are going through it. And obviously the men in Gilead and the power structure are terrified of that power that these girls are having.

[00:09:02] Just so much energy and intelligence and courage and seeing the world and exploding in all those different ways. They're like, oh. And so since they clamped down on that, I think as a coming-of-age story, just like in Handmaid's Tale. Handmaid's Tale feels like a woman we know kind of jammed up into a little ball and it's terrible to watch. This is the same thing, but it's the kind of movie we've seen and the kind of story we've seen. And we've seen it so many times. We make fun of it.

[00:09:31] We don't even understand how valuable it is. We don't understand how amazing it is. It's how amazing Fast Times at Ridgemont High is, just what they're doing, what they're talking about, what they're able to do, how much freedom they have, how much self-possession they have. So I think the idea of a twisted kind of what is a coming-of-age story like in a place like Gilead really felt – it feels juicy. It's something that I'm really interested in saying. And we love all those stories, by the way. Ferris Bueller, I mean, you know, Fast Times.

[00:10:00] I mean, what's the other John – you know, the one where the Breakfast Club – The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club. Pretty in Pink. Yes. Yeah. No, and they all are – you know, that's what I grew up with. But I like the idea – the thing that I like about it is that if you look at it now as a grown-up and say, what does that say about women? And what does it say about kind of the first love and all of those kinds of things from the position of being a grown-up?

[00:10:27] And then you say, well, you know, what of those things is Gilead against? What are the things in Clueless Gilead would be upset by? Well, basically everything. So a little comedy that comes out and we think is funny and remember a few years later they think is absolutely a Molotov cocktail to their culture.

[00:10:47] One of the things I love the best about both shows is how you and the actresses and the show brings these incredible characters to life. I think that's the thing that hits home with so many people is they just do such an incredible job. I'm curious which character maybe surprised you the most once you had casted it and filming had begun. It's a good question.

[00:11:17] They all really surprised me, which is the great thing about TV. I think – I mean you're part of the process, which is that, you know, in a film I would give a script to an actor and that's every word that character is ever going to save their entire existence. They can see – they can modulate that performance perfectly. But in the show I'm giving an actor a couple of episodes and then smiling nice and saying, trust me for the rest.

[00:11:45] I'm going to be building the bridge out in front of you while you're on it. And if you happen to either run off the edge because I run out of ideas or you go right and I go left, either way you're off the bridge. So you have to trust me to be able to do that. So that part of it, the back and forth kind of the call and response part of it is really fun because I get to write stuff for Chase. And then I get to see Chase do it and then I go, oh, she could do that. I wonder if she can do this. So that basic thing you don't get in a movie ever.

[00:12:14] I mean because you haven't seen – so here, you know, I have a whole first season. They know each other. They're so excited to come back and work together. It's just – that's what bringing the characters to life, that connection between the actors and the writer. It doesn't really exist in very many places where you're working in dynamism moving forward.

[00:12:34] But, you know, so the one thing that always surprises you is the way they look on camera versus the way they look in real life and the way they kind of read on camera. You know, like Lizzie is just absolutely magnetic on camera. You just can't take your eyes off her. And in person, she's, you know, totally delightful, but you can take your eyes off her. I mean, but on camera, you know, you can't. So, you know, there's different – so with Chase, you know, a lot of it was –

[00:13:02] she is so beautiful on camera. It was – it's a little difficult to cast her as a person who's not primarily beautiful on camera as their job or their existence. So – but she does – I thought she did a very good job seeming like a normal person. A girl, a vulnerable girl. Yeah. A vulnerable young woman going through the world. But at the end of the show, she has to really turn around and get kind of angry by the end of the season. So it's kind of – it's the opposite of many characters who you see. She doesn't start at an inflection point.

[00:13:32] She starts and she's fine. And the movie – the show is about over the season her breaking and becoming more rebellious. But at the beginning, she isn't. Yeah. It isn't a story about a rebel. She did a great job of playing younger. I was – Oh, my God. I so believe it. Yeah. Yeah. Lucy Halliday. I mean, I saw her on Jimmy Kimmel. I didn't know she was Scottish until I saw that. It shocked me.

[00:13:59] And just her life force is just huge, right? And the later episodes with her character – she's my favorite character. She's just such a badass. Yes. They're all my favorites. And I don't know if you guys also saw Lucy. The accent is so thick. And, you know, she auditioned. She had never been in a television show. That's the thing is most of these people – they're very young actors. And most of them have – you know, Rowan was on a TV series.

[00:14:29] Almost nobody else had – you know, Matea Conforti, who plays the spectacular Becca, she was mostly a Broadway actor. Wow. And usually if you have someone who's – she played Matilda on Broadway. But if you have someone who's a Broadway actor and then you bring them into a TV show and you put a camera – the camera used to be – there was no camera. It was a person sitting 250 yards from you. Right. Now it's a camera two inches in front of your face

[00:14:57] and you have to act not big enough for the back of the theater, but just – and she did it. She did it absolutely beautifully. When she was 18 years old, you know. Oh my gosh. When we hired her. And I pulled her out of Harvard. Her parents are going to kill me. Oh my gosh. They should be fine. So amazing. Oh my gosh. She just is mesmerizing. She's mesmerizing. So they all – but they all just bring a lot of different experience to the table. You know, Chase had done One Battle After Another, but I hadn't seen it. It hadn't come out.

[00:15:25] And she had done Presumed Innocent. And on Presumed Innocent was O.T. Fagbenly, who worked on Handmaid's Tale. Yeah. So when I was starting to look for Hannah, O.T. called me and he had spent all this time with Chase. In fact, they weren't in any scenes together. Chase had just come to set every day because she wanted to know what was going on and learn. So she was there all the time. And O.T. is not only a very – a lovely man,

[00:15:55] but also he really knows the kind of people I like to work with. And he called me. He goes, she's one of us. You should look at the audition. She's one of us. And I just thought it's adorable. He picked his daughter. You know, it's like Luke picks his own daughter. Yeah. And they are very, you know, simpatico. But Chase is a whole special conversation on her own. But I think they've all surprised me. You can see how, even though they are new,

[00:16:24] how patient they all were with making their characters come out. Like, you know, you slowly get to know the little bubbles in Agnes and these pieces of her. Or, you know, when you slow – Shu is so slow in terms of turning that page in terms of seeing her – what her central – what is her central character trait? Well, for a while you think it's Snark and then it turns out to be Sisterhood, you know. And so I think all of that. But we were very, very lucky with the cast.

[00:16:54] And it is a joint bringing them to life. That's the whole crew. I mean, it's every single person. So it's, you know, I'm writing raw material for that. The actors are acting raw material for that. And the wardrobe people are bringing in – you know, so everybody is putting together into that one thing that you said, Wendy, that I hope is true, is that they come to life. You know, for the actors, it's a lot of putting on their costume. They have – that really helps them feel like – Inhabiting it.

[00:17:22] We were talking, I think, before we started, about how we all – we've all read the book. And in the book, Shunammite was not our favorite character. She's kind of a mean girl and a gossip. And in the show, she's also a mean girl and a gossip. And yet we love her so much. I'm with you guys. The heart comes through. Yeah, there's so many layers to her that you didn't see in the book that you're getting to see on the TV series every week.

[00:17:52] And it just makes her more compelling because she's got the snarkiness, but she's also under that. She loves her friends. And so there were times in the season that she really surprised me because I didn't see that early on in the first few episodes. And then, boom, it starts happening. And you're just excited every week to see, what is Shu going to do in this situation?

[00:18:22] Whatever happens, it's going to be different. And then Rowan, I think it's a tribute to Rowan. Rowan is an excellent actress. But also to be patient enough to let you dislike Shu for that many episodes and never – until you realize that her – I mean, the way that I feel about it is she really is trying to help her friends. She's not very nice about it. She doesn't know how to be nice about it. But when she says do X, she isn't saying do X for me. She says, you know what you should do is do this.

[00:18:52] And she's incredibly bossy, but there's nothing nefarious about it. But what Rowan did with that, I think, is a function of – she has so much work under her belt that she was confident in kind of her take on the character that eventually you guys would like her. Eventually you would see her. And they're just so – first of all, she's this wonderful woman, you know, a wonderful young actor and all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:19] And she takes – there's so little of her in it. You learn so much about her. She really makes hay out of very little sun. And also we found ourselves feeling so empathetic for her when everyone else was passing her by and she showed some vulnerability there. It's really good. And learned about sex and everything. That's when you get to the season when you've seen a couple of episodes cut together of Rowan and you're like, oh, okay, now we're going to have Daisy explain sex. Because you all of a sudden think it's funny.

[00:19:49] And also Lucy is funny, you know, just in her – she's so earnest. So funny. But Lucy has got a ton of energy, human energy. It's wonderful. And she's so positive and true. And she cranks it all down to play Daisy. But when you see Lucy out in the world, she really does have an amazing amount of energy and spirit. And for they all do, all these young women. They're all so confident and terrific.

[00:20:16] And they don't – I don't know how, but they don't seem to be scared. Der Fußballsommer ist da. Jetzt heißt es mitfiebern, mitjubeln und sogar mitspielen. Klick aufs Banner und werde mit Rewe Bonus, dem Vorteilsprogramm der Rewe-App, selbst zum Matchwinner. Gewinne dein Elfmeter-Duell mit Bo, dem stärksten Rewe-Torwart aller Zeiten. Und sichere dir damit wöchentlich deinen Fan-Coupon, sowie die Chance auf attraktive Sachpreise. Also los!

[00:20:45] Schnapp dir jetzt deinen Fan-Bonus in der Rewe-App. Nur bis zum 18.07. I'd like to talk about another woman in the show, Lydia. Yeah. Who – I wonder what you think of my read about her, that on some level she's always going back to the early days of The Handmaid's Tale, doing what she thought was necessary to protect and toughen up the women of Gilead.

[00:21:11] I mean, it's hard for me to believe that you would go so far as to take someone's eye, but that is what I think was going on now after we've seen the stadium. Incredible episode. Yeah, incredible. It was beautifully written by Gianna, who was the slightly butch dyke who was pulled out of line by the bad – that was the writer who decided she wanted to be in the show as the stereotypically gay character. Oh, really?

[00:21:41] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Wow. But I think Lydia – my sense is she – like you said, she's committed to both these girls, but also the reality of what's going to happen in the environment. But also I think at that point, these girls being delivered to her, she really thought poorly of. She thought these girls were – so there was, in addition, the just general disapproval

[00:22:10] and feeling that these women at the beginning were the women who really were the problem. So I think there was a little bit of passion behind it. But, you know, you say – I mean, listen, Ginny is alive. She wouldn't have – with that mouth, she would have been dead if she sent her to a house with that mouth. So I think taking her eye saved her life, which is what she was trying to do. So – but I do think that, you know, her character has evolved over time, and I think when she goes back to the beginning of Gilead, it's rose-colored glasses. I think she was enjoying the power.

[00:22:40] She was enjoying the power over these young women to do exactly – make them do exactly what she wanted. And it was a time of kind of great – it was a crusade, and she was kind of part of that. So she was somewhat of a believer then. Oh, yeah, but I think – yeah. I mean, yeah, she – there's all kinds of – yeah, I mean, she certainly thought the world was in crappy shape. I mean, that the patriarchy had done a bad job. Maybe it was trying to try something else. And, you know, I don't think of her – I think of her as a survivor,

[00:23:08] but I also think of her as someone who does her duty and with passion, but also kind of very directly. I mean, I think that when you think about what she did to the girls, so much of it was about making sure that they wouldn't make the missteps that would get them killed, that they wouldn't become too friendly with each other, that they wouldn't become – you know, start doing secretive things with each other, and that they wouldn't mouth off. It didn't work at all.

[00:23:36] I mean, they all did exactly – all those things. But that, I think, was her intention to protect them. Sure. Okay. I'm curious if there were any moments or scenes that you wanted to adapt from Margaret Atwood's novel, The Testaments, that seemed really challenging or maybe impossible to adapt until you, like, had that breakthrough and figured out how to do it? You know, there really did feel like it was a breakthrough. Because the book takes place over such a long period of time,

[00:24:05] and it isn't really mostly about – I mean, it isn't mostly about her in high school or around that age. That's part of it. She's talking about a lot of that's in the past. And also, she's never in the story with the other character, with Daisy. They're separated by so many years. They're never going through this stuff together, certainly. They're never – so I think making the decision to kind of focus it on that time of their lives

[00:24:33] was really the biggest – you know, because then all of a sudden you've got something to be a metaphor for, a teen movie or something. You know, so what's our version of a teen story? But, Wendy, you asked me your question again. I forgot. I was just wondering if there was something from the novel that you wanted to adapt that you found challenging or – Yes, absolutely. Well, I think the stadium scene, the stadium flashback, we wanted to adapt and we found very challenging.

[00:25:00] Because, you know, I'm very squeamish myself, and we try to show as little as possible for you to get it. And I know that when I read those chapters, I remembered them very vividly. And so when I showed it, I wanted it to be vivid, but you can't – honestly, you know, Margaret can't even do what really happens in the world, even written in a novel. Right. I mean, you know, so the show is rough and it's almost impossible for me to watch,

[00:25:28] and we're not showing people having their relatives brought in and raped in front of them or skinned in the next room while they – Thank you for that. I mean, these things that happen all over the world. Yeah. And that are just so horrific that you can't imagine that, you know, if I – you know, if I showed these women being raped by dogs, would you watch that on television? No, but it's a – it happens in the world and it's a horrible – But it was already the most harrowing episode as it was, for sure. Right. And so I try to keep it simple and harrowing. Yeah.

[00:25:56] But it was a challenge because you want it to be harrowing but not disgusting. You don't want people to turn away from you. Yeah. You got to find that line. I love it that the showrunner of The Handmaid's Tale just said, I'm squeamish. I am. I mean, I'm squeamish and I can't watch the naked scenes. What I wonder, like, as a – I always think about this because we cover so many shows

[00:26:22] that – and, you know, as a viewer, sometimes you think you just want everyone to be happy, but no one would watch that. And so as a writer, you have the challenge of creating bad situations for these characters that you love. And do you find that, like, invigorating or challenging? Or, you know, how do you process that kind of thing? Well, I think I process it. I feel blessed to be in a time where that can happen because we're in a very strange time

[00:26:48] where, you know, if someone makes a movie or puts something out there, they can talk about it forever. But here with TV, you make some, and everybody watches it and talks about it, and then you make some more. And they watch – and so that system of – and it's just kind of, I think, the way things are happening now in terms of fan bases and everything. That system hasn't really existed. For me, it's totally fun to be able to actually hear and digest what people got from the show as opposed to what I thought was in there.

[00:27:17] Because, you know, I'm watching and I get my 30% out, but I want to see what other people get and how they felt about it. Because then – because so that period of time, that reflex on us allows me to make the next season, I hope, significantly better than the first season. So whereas before, if you were just – if I was going to make you 90 episodes, you were going to watch, you know, 10 a year for nine years.

[00:27:41] I think by the end, you would be – you probably would feel like it isn't quite following your heart because I couldn't listen to your heart at all. It's a conversation. Yeah, it's a conversation. And it really is very much with the actors as well that, you know, like I said before, we're writing ahead of them. But with someone like Chase, you see how much she can do. And also you see what she did with the scene, and that changes what you're going to write next.

[00:28:10] She is – you know, she's got a shade of horror underneath her pleasure, and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to follow the horror, not the pleasure. But that's them. And so they drive – especially these young – because they're totally fearless. They're so – they do big, big things and big changes if I want them to. So they're wonderful. One of the things, Wendy, in the book, there's a salvaging in the beginning where the handmaids tear up someone in front of the girls in school.

[00:28:38] And I wanted to do that very much, but it kind of – it had lost, for me, at least a little of its venom because we did it before or so. So I came up with something else. But the idea that a character who eventually knows that her mother is a handmaid watching a bunch of handmaids tear a guy apart goes, well, Mom, I wonder what you were like. One way that I feel like you really followed the heart of the story,

[00:29:05] because when you read the books, the mother who's never named the handmaid, she's not really present. But June is present, and I feel like that is because this is the show, and that's needed to happen. And we were so delighted to see her, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. It was such a nice surprise, because honestly, going into this show, I thought we're probably not going to get a lot of cameos,

[00:29:30] and that's probably a good thing, because then we can really connect with these characters. And then there's June right there. In a way, I don't know. I wasn't expecting it. And then I just got more excited as the season went on, wondering, wow, we could see more of this and that connection to the handmaid's tale. And I think it helped bring people in.

[00:29:58] While they were getting to know the new characters, they still had that sense of, oh, but we haven't lost the handmaid's tale. We haven't lost that connection to the show. It has the June seal of approval. Yeah, I mean, I didn't expect to do cameos. I didn't have any thoughts about it. I found that when I read the book, I felt like June was the big overriding force outside.

[00:30:27] Whether she was doing anything or not, she was attempting to do things the entire book. And so when I did the show, I wanted to make sure it felt like that, that June was out there. She was still, because that's kind of what the story is, that Agnes is realizing June was out there the whole time. So all these things that happened in her life, she's realizing was mothering, you know, what's happening, you know, what was happening in so far away was somehow either making her more or less dangerous or making her family move from one house to another.

[00:30:57] The cameos, I mean, I would have everybody back. And I had a really funny moment when I went to talk to someone about the next season, and they, an executive, and they said, do you, do you think anybody on the cast would come back and do a cameo? And I was like, yeah, everybody. What are you talking about? What are shows like? Do people hate each other that much that they won't come back and even do a cameo? I mean, it was like, really? Do people, because, you know, we had at the beginning of the first episode,

[00:31:26] you know, it's Mark Toello is there, June is there, you know, Stephen Colbert is there, you know, and they were all very happy, and I was thrilled to have them. It just seemed like Handmaid's Tale was a very close-knit family, mostly because it was a lot of the same people every year that came back. But they would, they have been so supportive of this. They would love to come back. They've all done, you know, they would help in any way they possibly could. OT found us our star.

[00:31:56] So it surprised me, and I don't know how you guys feel. Do you feel like, while watching the Handmaid's Tale, you would think at the end of it, no one would want to speak to each other again? You know? No, I think Luke is in the house when June's out on the porch. He's baking in the kitchen, right? He's baking in the kitchen. Did you see the shoes by the door? You did? Yes. Yeah, they're little, little Nicole shoes by the door, yes. Aw, that's great. We look for those little details,

[00:32:25] because we're trying to like piece things together about what could come next. Yeah. Yeah, well, we do as well. I mean, one of the things I feel like in television that's wonderful is that it's the visual meeting. One of the problems is I'm not the visual part of it. So you always are writing and leaving a lot of room for all those visual storytelling things. And we have an, I mean, that's the production designer telling you that she has a daughter. Not me telling you that she has a daughter.

[00:32:54] The production designer figuring out a way to say daughter. You know, and not kid living in the house. Daughter. There's mother's boots and little kid boots. Daughter. And there's a picture on the other wall written by, drawn by a kid. That's what that means, is there's a kid in the house. And so the visual storytelling, which is so much of the show, comes in through every other department besides mine. Mine is often the one that's, the person's lying. You know, mine's the one where they're saying, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. And every other department is saying

[00:33:24] her life is shitty today. And I'm the one who's trying to sell. It's fine. It's fine. You know, and even the actors, all their whole body says it's shitty while they're saying it's fine. So I'm the only one kind of out on the prowl of lying. So, but it is how every other department adds to the visual storytelling that makes it so rich. I mean, you just want everybody to know, not just the world, but what story you're trying to tell. And then you can tell it with props and you can tell it with stolen paintings on the wall

[00:33:52] and you can tell it with music, you know, and you can tell. Yes. It's just amazing. I mean, the cinematography and visuals, I mean, you've, you've ruined me for most of the shows. Like really. Severance is pretty good. We talk about it all the time. Yeah. I, I'm very happy with, I'm how beautiful the show is and they work very hard. And I think a lot of it is that we just kind of talk about it a lot. We want the show to look good. Um, and so I,

[00:34:21] but we've had Greta and Mark, who are our two DPs, the cooperation between those two departments and production design and wardrobe, especially, um, in terms of just picking a purple. We, we spend, you know, a month picking a purple, um, because it has to look good on all of those women. And if it doesn't, you're fucked because they're, they can't change clothes. They can't, you know, so you really, they have to, it's an F to with an H. And so we really have to find something that works.

[00:34:51] So it was the collection kind of of all of those departments. And I think that's why the cinematography looks so beautiful because it's matched beautifully, not just with the art, art direction and the buildings and the painting, but where it's happening, which is a whole other department, the locations department who finds that, you know, there's that huge lawn going out to the water and all that kind of stuff. All of that stuff is what they, how they're telling the story. So it's a big combination of everybody adding a little bit to the, the story and the, and the, but the cinematographer,

[00:35:19] I think what I try to tell them is I want everybody to be able to understand it. If I cut out all the words, they should be able to understand everything that's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Color plays such a big part in it. We've talked about it on some of our episodes about how vivid the colors are and how that just creates your mind going somewhere. Immediately. It pulls you right back in.

[00:35:45] One color we have not seen as much of or any of really is red. Was that a conscious decision for this season? Or is it part of the bigger story? Maybe that we haven't seen yet. It would make me look so smart if I thought, Oh, it would be perfect thematically not to have. No, we just ended up cutting out the few little pieces where we had handmaids on the street and handmaids here and handmaids there. And there were a few little, and they just didn't make any sense.

[00:36:14] It felt like it opened a can of worms that we weren't quite ready to get to. And it felt like they wouldn't be in that area too much. That wasn't the story that was going on. So it was not intentional, but I'm thrilled the way it turned out. You watch in the beginning and there's not a handmaid in it except for that empty slot. It's perfect. It does make me look like I was really, There's a vacuum. Really, really thoughtful and smart, but I was neither thoughtful nor smart. Yeah. But, but I think that, and we didn't want to differentiate the show.

[00:36:43] My feeling about the show is it's ties to handmaids, you know, make it better. And, and, and also, you know, there's, it's so different. It's such a different story. You know, it was going to have its own life and feel. And it's about so much different and they're happy. They're, you know, they've built a happy life here. June, you know, had nothing but the only happy thing she had were memories. You know, here, this is, you know, Agnes not only has happy days, she has happy dreams, you know, sometimes. So, so I think that, you know, it's a,

[00:37:12] it's a different world. And I think that, anyway, I, I wanted to, I just wanted to circle back to the June and the, and the cameos for a second. The, the June, Lizzie, you know, she has a very busy schedule. And so she would come back and, and help whenever she wanted to. But I, I think a lot of it, one of the things that made those stories so good is we only had Lizzie for a short period of time. So we had to do a bunch of stories with Lizzie and Lucy and,

[00:37:41] and in a motel room or Lizzie and Lucy in a restaurant, you know, get those scenes done because we didn't have a ton of, of time with Elizabeth Moss. And I think it, there could just as easily have been a version of the show where she wasn't available at all as an actor. And so it, it was as much Elizabeth Moss being a good colleague and friend and her affection for the character in the show and feeling like there's more to do that kind of made that character show up. Generally,

[00:38:11] you know, we use red really thoughtfully, not necessarily sparingly. And I, it, it didn't come up except for those few times we did not. Um, you know, we thought about in the, in the junk shop, you've got this huge junk shop. You could have all sorts of red things there. It didn't really, it didn't, it didn't click. It didn't feel like that, that, that was, it didn't feel like there was a handmaid hanging over the story. We told her story as a hand. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it feels like, you know,

[00:38:40] you come in as a fan and maybe you want to see a handmaid, but no, this is a different thing. And so it was nice to just let this world establish itself before we can, maybe go back and check in on them next season or something like that. That's the way. The only thing I was sad about is you guys read in the book and I expanded on it. There was a really great part where, where, uh, in the book when Agnes is talking about, honestly, we thought they were creepy. We thought handmaids were creepy. They, well, they always walk in tubes. They keep their heads down.

[00:39:10] They won't talk to you. They were freaky. So I, so in the book, it's a little bit, but I had heard this whole tirade about how basically incredibly, incredibly scary and like a horror movie character, these little weird things walking by. She goes, and they were all having sex when you, you know, and you couldn't see their faces. So, so just when you think of like their age, like 14 or 15 and seeing these weirdos around, it would just be like, I don't want to. So, uh, that was really fun in the book. And, and we definitely,

[00:39:39] they talk a little bit about, you know, handmaids and, you know, that certainly not speak of them nicely. Yeah. Yeah. And that, I mean, all of this really ties together in something that I'm very curious about, which is what exactly Agnes knows and remembers about her mother. And, and from what I took, it was pretty clear. She didn't make the connection at all that her mother was the infamous June Osborne who did the, the, um, night of tears and had handmaids kill their commanders and whatever else they

[00:40:09] happen to know about. But I still get the impression that Agnes has some kind of baby faint memories of her mother and that they're probably heavily colored by the story. She's been told your mother was a sinful handmaid or something like that. I don't know how much you can, you guys were very, you guys, when you were talking about it, you were right on the right track. And, and, and, and, you know, I think, I think that we did a lot of research on this with people who had been through this experience, been taken away from their family,

[00:40:38] had a big trauma, trauma in their, like when they were eight or nine, how much they remember from before that. And mostly, and you, you talk to a few people, but mostly you talk to the therapists and the people at the UN who deal with these people. So they've seen a thousand or 2000 or 10,000 and they tell you what, so the first thing that we did is look very carefully at Agnes's point of view and what she, what she experienced from her point of view. You know, at one point she was put in a car and she was taken out and she remembered her mom in this house.

[00:41:07] And she had this huge traumatic thing for like, four minutes and then they took her away. And, and then she told her mother, you know, that she saw her and then she didn't see her. So she was in the glass box. I don't think she saw her again. So, you know, and who knows what she saw from inside the glass box. So from our point of view, she's been talking and thinking about Agnes a lot, but Agnes hasn't been thinking about her mother a lot. So the two things that, that, that are kind of big, we,

[00:41:35] I thought what they would use in that world is that telling stories and drugging the kids that the kids would have been drugged initially for a while to lose track of memories. Memories. That's exactly what they were trying to do is dislodge the real thing from the fake thing while they told them stories. And so, so I think she remembers the woods. Absolutely. She remembers a bunch of witches and all this stuff. And when she is, as she is told real things,

[00:42:04] those seem to fit better. And as she's told, so I think she has memories of, of lots of the kids stuff that we've seen, but their memories of her, when she was little in a living in a different world with different people that she has been told kind of didn't even exist. So it's, it's wiped away in a way that even if she remembers it, she doesn't believe it. It's like something from a movie. So that's my feeling is that's what she remembers. And she is putting pieces together as she goes along,

[00:42:32] because I think at some point it isn't that she didn't want to remember, but what's the point? I mean, you're living your life. None of it matters at all. You know, why do you force yourself to, you know, forced to remember? And I think that's what Tabitha wanted to do is to take away her trauma and say, no, no, nothing bad happened before you got here. It's all fine. So that made sense to me. And that Agnes would gradually be not recovering those memories, but there was a, there's enough string, little pieces there. She remembers,

[00:43:00] I think being on the run with her parents and she probably remembers her apartment in Boston and those kinds of things. I think those pieces are there, but you wouldn't necessarily, I don't think that adds up to, I was stolen from my mother in any, right. I just wonder if she has, I have some weird memories from when I was a kid, but if she has a negative or a positive or a neutral, a feeling, I think she has a, well, I think she has a negative opinion of June Osborne and a positive opinion of that mom that she remembers. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:30] June Osborne's Osama bin Laden. It's like, it's like if I said, you're, by the way, Jason, your dad's Osama bin Laden, you would be mixed. That would take a minute to process. Yeah. Just take a minute. Eubos Anti-Age. Dein neues Duo gegen Pigmentflecken und Hautalterung. Eubos. Individual Skincare.

[00:44:03] Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut. Sehr gut? Wieso Steuer ist sehr gut? Das sagen ganz viele. Cool, wer sagt das? Stiftung Warentest, Computerbild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztip, such dir was aus. Mega, aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö. Einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig. Klingt sehr gut. Ist sehr gut. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Mit Visum Steuer. We always recommend Shopify. It took us from an idea to a real business.

[00:44:30] We got set up, I think, in less than a day with very little effort. We could just focus on the supply chains of the product development. Shopify gives us the ability to customize without the complexity. We can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer. We're Thirsty Turtle and we leveled up our business with Shopify. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash AU. One of our listeners had a great question. This is from Lainey Brunk.

[00:45:00] She says that it seems like season one of The Testaments mirrored The Handmaid's Tale in that it served as a great introduction to the characters in the key spaces, hooking us into the world and the story. And then season two and three of The Handmaid's Tale showed us more of the wider world of Gilead with in-depth looks at the colonies, Washington, D.C.

[00:45:22] And she's curious if you're going to do that similarly in The Testaments, giving us new settings and insights into parts of Gilead that maybe we haven't seen yet. Oh, absolutely, Lainey. Yeah, no, absolutely. And out of just kind of delicious curiosity as well as story.

[00:45:44] These girls, there isn't quite as much of you're locked in your room in The Handmaid's Tale and whenever you're taking out, you're seeing, oh, my God, look what they did to my world. These girls have been around a little bit more. They've been taken to events and da-da-da. They're kind of not as surprised by kind of how the world, you know, has changed or, you know, the big new things in Gilead. So for Daisy and from Daisy's point of view, that gives us that kind of shock of, you know.

[00:46:13] But I think Daisy even grew up with the Washington Monument was across. I mean, she doesn't remember, you know, very much before that, too. But I, you know, season one of everything introduces the world and the characters. That's, you know, if you get a season two, that's what you hope you're doing in season one is introducing all of those puzzle pieces. But what I try to do is I try to focus on the stories and not the introducing and just kind of.

[00:46:42] And what comes up in those stories and what you learn, that's fine. But if it doesn't come up and isn't in those stories, often I just ignore it and let you guys noodle around with it for a while. In Handmaid's, it was because June didn't know Dick. I mean, she didn't know anything that was going on. You guys could come up. But here, Daisy knows sort of, but it's the really aspect of it for Daisy. Like, honestly, is this the way things work? And so I think that we're with her there.

[00:47:10] And Lucy has such a great face. She's our servant. Absolutely. She speaks for the audience a lot of the times it feels like. What about the, how have you felt, I'm butting in, it's not my turn, sorry, but about the voiceovers. There's, has that, I'm really loving it. It lends to that teen coming of age story. But it seems, I mean, I know that there was some in the, in the hammock style, but not like here. And have you had fun playing with that? Oh my gosh. Yes.

[00:47:37] Well, you know, they tell all writers, you know, don't use VO. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a shortcut. Don't, you know, they always tell writers. And, you know, honestly with Handmaids, I broke every fucking rule. I mean, no flashbacks ever, certainly in a pilot. You know, funny costumes, talking weird, you know, shows about women never, ever succeed, you know, and voiceover. Oh my God, what a shortcut. How lazy are you? And so, but the whole book was voiceover.

[00:48:06] The whole book is voiceover. And so, you know, so anyway, I mean, every single rule I had ever been taught, I stomped on. So it was nice here to have more than one point of view. It was complicated, but it's nice. And when you, when you hear the book, you really feel it. Like it's almost three, you know, it's almost like three different blind eyes feeling an elephant. The writing style is different. It's like three books. It really is.

[00:48:34] The writing style, the thinking style, the amount that they forgive themselves and justify. I just love that Lydia forgives herself everything. And Agnes forgives herself nothing. And it just, it's absolutely like June. June, you know, June's body keeps the score. But so the VO, writing Lydia VO was delicious. And Anne is a, is a friend and a terrific woman and a terrific actress.

[00:49:01] And, and kind is the, I know you guys know, kind is the day is long. And, and, and has been so excited to be surrounded by all the girls, the younger women think she's God. I mean, she thinks she is that statue. I mean, as Anne, they see these young actors who just, they sit at her, her, oh, tell us more, Anne, tell us more. And it's just wonderful because it's like a nice Aunt Lydia. But hearing her voice was great. Now, the voiceover is a good thing for me because I can add it at the end.

[00:49:31] So I can add it at the beginning. I really, you read a script that's got all this voiceover. And then you do the script. I edit it together. And then I decide it was about something else. And I have them do VO that's about something else or sharpens it in a different way. But, you know, Lizzie did VO on the first one. And everybody's very used to that.

[00:49:50] So when we started to put our temporary voiceover, you know, record Lucy and record over the, the picture, everybody was like, it doesn't sound because it wasn't June. It doesn't sound, it doesn't have enough, but it doesn't have enough gravitas. Can we rerecord it? Whatever. I was like, they're 22. They don't have, they haven't grown up any gravitas. Yeah, it's different. And they all had great voices. And I love it.

[00:50:15] But it was so, and the thing I had to remind everybody was, you know, Lizzie had to do it seven times the first time. She didn't, she didn't poop out perfect VO. You know, she worked on it. And our women worked on it. And they, they, you know, you go in with the, you know, it's not with the director. It's with the sound guy. And they talk you through exactly how they want you to do things and performance and voice. And fortunately, Chase is very well trained with her voice.

[00:50:40] So she, we can get a lot out of her pitching her voice up and down and adding a little bit of grit to it. So it sounds like she's a little bit of older, older. She can do all those things kind of in a, you know, on the run. They're very skilled. I mean, she, she's, I don't know how they do those things anyway. And Lucy, Lucy had been in no television shows. And she's like, go to ADR. She's like, okay. I mean, she knew exactly how to do it. And well, I have no, she told me the story of her first, first show.

[00:51:08] I said, so how did you learn, like, how to stand in front of the camera and do that stuff? You had never done it. How did you learn? She goes, I don't know. She, because the, she said the job that I got first, they had someone else cast to like four days before. And then they cast me and, and she was like the star of the big role. So she had this big role to learn in like four days. And she comes in and I said, well, what happened the first day? She goes, well, they put on my costume and they set off with you. And that was it. She goes, that was the instructions that they gave me.

[00:51:37] She's a natural. Yeah. And I was like, okay. And so, so she obviously learned a lot, but they have a lot of skills like that, that you don't expect them to have going to VO and working for eight or nine hours on four sentences. Because you want them to be right. And you want them to, and to come, to be fresh about that and never complain. And I mean, it's, it's what they do is, is very hard to do.

[00:52:04] So, and no matter how many gifts you have, no matter how many gifts Chase has, it's the hard work that really is the one that matters. That's the one that is so rare. They, they work their asses off. They show up so prepared on the day and in the room for VO. So, you know, you show up with, and they're talking to me about really very specifically, why am I saying this here? Why am I saying this here? Or am I angry? Am I sad? Where do I know this?

[00:52:33] And so what you have to do for an actor is you got to say, they say to me, okay, well, what's the fucking VO? What am I doing? Because most of my performance is VO from the, what am I doing? Am I sitting in the bathroom? Am I practicing? Am I on a radio show? You know, what am I doing? And here it's a testament. So what's her testament? Is she recording? So I said, you know, you're reading off a handwritten piece of paper. You tore it out of a notebook, spiral notebook, but you hand wrote the whole thing out and you're reading it. And that's what you're doing.

[00:53:02] And so it's something you wrote ahead of time. You're not reading off the cuff, but the VO is stuff that you wrote for yourself to say to this group of people about what happened in Gilead. And you saw what June's was eventually. Where was she? She was sitting in that, on that burned out bench recording her story. That's exactly where she was. But you have to, I mean, if you think about it from an actress point of view, that's what they're doing. You have to tell them what they're actually doing when they're doing this. You know, are they, is it Thanksgiving and they're telling a story to their grandchild?

[00:53:32] Or is it, you know, in court like this? Right. We're trying to figure it out. But they, I mean, Lydia is a really interesting one as well. We would love more of that, by the way. We're excited for more. We love it all. Yeah. We, we, you know, the last year of Handmaid's was very rough, very rough production. And in fact, the final.

[00:53:56] So when we came into the, the, I, we wanted to treat Anne with the respect not to over work her at the beginning. So I think we, we, we used a looming Lydia in the mind and let, and just have a little bit of a, a break after. I mean, we started shooting Testament six weeks after we shut down Handmaid's Tale. So, so it was insanity. And so, so we would have loved to have her more in the, in the first season. And she was in a lot.

[00:54:26] But we definitely, I think I was handling her, but we were in a lot of kids' gloves. She never needs to be handled with kids' gloves. It was nice to get to know the girls really solid, solidly. Yes. I agree. And, and it, it was tough. I mean, it's tough to leave behind Lydia when you're leaving behind June and say, we're going to depend on these girls. And I think the studio network was nervous. Fortunately, they all just ooze charisma, whatever that is. They each have a light bulb inside of them.

[00:54:55] They're like, and you can see it when you're with them, like in real life. It's just, they're so charismatic. It's just, I love it. It's such a funny, it's, you cannot help but like want to talk to them and want to be with them. You know, matter, it's so amazing to watch just, just how natural that is inside of them. We're getting the sign to wrap. Yep. We don't want to, we'd love to keep going. We would. Well, I certainly, if you had two more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

[00:55:26] Okay. Yeah. So our listeners loved the backstories that they got on different characters this season and have wondered if we will get more of those maybe, or are hoping that we will get more of them. Like Garth, Daisy, who else did we say? Paula. Paula. Paula. Paula is definitely one of the intriguing characters. Oh, I'd watch the Paula show.

[00:55:52] I'd watch two or three seasons about how Paula, Paula as a therapist, you know, she would have been wonderful. Yeah. She seemed delightful. Great therapist.

[00:56:29] They're fascinating. And they're coming.

[00:57:02] And they're coming. I'm going to be like, I want to know about that character.

[00:57:29] I'm not showing a backstory of Lydia being nice so you don't think she's so awful. But Garth, we got to know how Garth got to be the way he is. He is a terrific, what a job. Okay, he's like 20 years old. Okay, here you are, you're in this show, and it's all about everybody else. It's nothing's about you. It's all, and you're the only man, and it's a cast of 19 women with you.

[00:57:56] And they're all just, and he's very quiet, and they just are so, they're all like Lucy. You know, like Daisy. They just bowl over you all the time. They're such strong personalities. I love it, but they're such strong personalities, all of them. And he is so, he handles it all so perfectly. Just quiet, British, sweet guy, you know. He's great. Yeah, he's great. But think of that being thrown into that kiddie pool. Yeah. With Chase and Lucy and Rowan. Isn't it?

[00:58:25] I mean, I'm surprised he lived. You know, he is. He's just, he's a man amongst boys, a boy amongst women. You know. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's the way I felt every day. They just came on with so much energy singing the, singing Shrek the musical at the top of their lungs every day. Or, oh my God, they're all such Broadway kids. It was, it was, it was, it was a real, I, it was a pleasure to be there with them. It really was.

[00:58:55] Just, it makes you excited about the next generation of humans. Yeah. That's, that's good. We need that. Yes. Absolutely. So one last question, if you'd like. I'll ask this one. Has adapting Testaments inspired you to flesh out or adapt other, or views from other focal points in Gilead?

[00:59:17] Not Handmaids, not the girls, but maybe the eyes or one of the other pieces. Absolutely. I think, you know, it is the, the beauty of Margaret Atwood and the way she writes is that she can kind of mention the colonies in two sentences in a book and you get it in your head and you figure out, oh my God. So I think, yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of, you know, there's all sorts, I think, of, of, of places that I would like to expand.

[00:59:45] So I think the, um, uh, there are a whole bunch and I think, uh, the war front is always and kind of the power structure and those kinds of things and what the different places look like in terms of how far, how far does the power of Gilead spread? And in the book, uh, you really got a good sense as Daisy and Agnes were fleeing, they went through kind of the hinterlands and you've got some stuff about that, the hinterlands in,

[01:00:10] in, in Gilead, which all, which every little piece kind of helps build a bigger world. So, you know, a little bit more. Um, and once again, this is good. Daisy doesn't really know much about Gilead and neither does Agnes. I mean, um, there's a, there's a fun story we're working on now where they're on a road trip, which is just a whole area. It's the idea of a road trap in Gilead with Paul. It's awful. Oh my God. And like the radio's on the whole time and he's riding the brake and oh my God. Are we going to get another season next year?

[01:00:39] Do you think we'll get another season within a year, a year away? That's my goal. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's why I look the way I do. Yes. That's, that's the goal. Um, Disney has been very nice and they started the room up, uh, as soon as we possibly could get the room started. We did. Um, but you know, in the old days, they didn't pick up television shows until they had been on and the summer had been over.

[01:01:04] And also now they were, they were pressured to pick up the show after it had been on for three episodes. I mean, I was like, you know, and so, uh, they were very nice to pick it up when they did. If you imagine what they're, you know, what they're betting. I mean, it's, it's, it's not cheap. Um, you know, it's $120 million or something for a season. I'll probably a little bit more than that. And so, uh, but they, they bet on the room and then they, they picked up the show as well.

[01:01:31] Uh, so, um, I never did know it's never my choice. A lot of these things, the schedule or, you know, people say, how many seasons do you have planned? I'm like, didn't you see every television show growing up? They canceled them out of nowhere. I have no choice. You know, they canceled them on a Thursday and you're like, okay, well that's the end of the Rockford files. I guess that's the last Rockford files story. Um, and so I, I think, um, getting a little bit of headway to know when you're going to

[01:01:57] end a story like this, especially, I think, I hope that we get a chance because I think the audience would like to have a nice, as much of a, a wrap up as I could do. So they could be furious at me and argue for the next 35 years. But it, but it does open up definitely. It does open up. And I always, you know, everything from other parts of Gilead to do stories in to, um, did you ever see on the beach that moved? Do you remember that movie? It's a movie about, it's a novel. Yeah.

[01:02:26] And it's a, it's a book about, it takes place in Australia and there's been a nuclear war and the rest of the world is, is gone. And the radiation is going to come to Australia in about two or three years, just as it comes around the world. And they're just waiting. There's nothing they can do. And so that's the story. So I always thought that's kind of the story, the story of the people in Hawaii, you know, living in paradise and not being able to do anything about this Gilead's just taking over America and they're stuck in paradise.

[01:02:55] So, you know, I do think about people, you know, on the edges of, of this, you know, we saw the Mexican ambassador and the Swiss ambassador and all those kinds of things. I would see Shuna might, if her dad got to be the French ambassador, I'd love her in Paris. Oh my goodness. All right. I would never, ever, ever stop watching that show. Yep. So, but it, it, it, um, we're having a lot of fun making. I know it seems very mean and cruel, but it is exactly the opposite in terms of the set.

[01:03:24] It's a very 14 year old fart joke kind of place. That's good. Yes, it is. And, and especially with the young women, you know, they do not take anything seriously at all. So it's a charming bunch, but thank you guys for, for doing all the coverage of this year. I really appreciate it. And also for your, your fans are terrific and always have, I'm always talking to the radio wanting to talk, wanting to answer the questions.

[01:03:53] Well, thank you so much, Bruce. It's, it's always a pleasure to talk to you and congratulations on the success of the show. I'm so glad it's been such a hit. Thank you. Yeah. I did it all for you. Thank you guys. All right. That's our show. Thanks for listening, everyone.

[01:04:19] If you're watching this on YouTube, come check out our podcast where we do in-depth talk on every episode of the show. We do the deep, deep, deep dives. Yeah. And you can easily find us by going to thetestamentspodcast.com. Bye. Bye. From artificial intelligence to the gig economy to global volatility, the economy is changing at a dizzying pace.

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