A Handmaid's Tale

TV’s ‘queen of drama’ on playing a feminist icon, her everyday life as a Manhattan cat lady and why you should buy yourself jewellery.

- Sandra Parmee

If you’ve watched any really good TV over the past decade, chances are you’ve seen Elisabeth Moss in action. While many stars have sought longevity in Hollywood blockbusters, Elisabeth was drawn to television. She’s starred in premier shows like Top of the Lake, The West Wing and Mad Men, all of which have made her the unofficial Queen of TV Drama and won her several top tier awards. The 35-year-old American actress and producer was simply looking for good writing at the time, she told Vulture last year.

‘I think that enabled me to say “yes” to some television things perhaps before everyone was saying “yes”,’ she says. Award-winning shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and The Wire have ushered in a new age of TV, which some are calling the Golden Age, and with streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Showmax gaining popularity, top-quality programming is increasingly at our fingertips.

But not everyone foresaw that TV would be back in a big way. Even in 2007 when Mad Men first aired, TV stars were seen as ‘less than’.

‘We were in a world where, as an actor, you weren’t really supposed to do television,’ Elisabeth says. ‘It was kind of like the lesser group of people. But because I never put those parameters on things, and I was just like “this is an amazing script and an amazing project; of course I’m going to do this”, it became part of one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.’