Small - Screen Queen

It’s two years since Mad Men disappeared from our screens, but the artist formerly known as Peggy Olson is still everything we want to watch right now. Elisabeth Moss talks to Martha Hayes about finding  her voice, owning the F-word and getting over herself

- Martha Hayes

‘Oh my god, it’s way too dark and weird in here!’ shrieks Elisabeth Moss. And she’s right. It’s pitch black. We’ve met in the lounge of a central London hotel and, in an attempt to create the right ambience, Moss has managed, momentarily, to switch the lights out completely. It’s a fitting metaphor for The Handmaid’s Tale (which she’s about to start filming the second season of ). It’s by far the darkest, scariest, thing I’ve ever seen on TV, I tell her. She’s delighted.

‘When people are like, “It’s so dark, I can’t watch it,” I’m like, “Thanks!”’ she beams, bounding over to me, lighting restored, in an all-black combo of skinny jeans and a leather jacket. ‘It’s no darker than what’s happening in real life.’ Well, quite. To say the recent critically acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel struck a chord is an understatement. Set in a totalitarian society, where fertile women are captured and kept for reproductive purposes, its running themes of sexual slavery, human trafficking and religious persecution certainly don’t feel so fictional right now. ‘We didn’t know it was going to resonate quite in the way it has,’ nods Moss, reflecting on how Trump came into power in the US when they were halfway through filming and the atmosphere was ‘like a funeral’ on set. ‘I suppose it just got… very close to home.’