After spending nearly a decade in the dark world of Gilead as star of The Handmaid’s Tale, Elisabeth Moss is onto some lighter — though still murderous — fare.
The actress has been developing an adaptation of Araminta Hall’s novel Imperfect Women since 2019, following three longtime friends whose lives are upended when one of them is murdered and secrets start to be uncovered.
It wasn’t Moss’ specific plan to have the series be her Handmaid’s follow-up — as the project faced delays due to the pandemic and Hollywood strikes — “but I did know that I wanted to do something very different from Handmaid’s, and much more fun and much more entertaining and more of a water cooler show,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere on Tuesday.
“Not going to lie, it’s nice,” Moss confirmed of the change of pace. “Shooting in L.A. in the summer versus Toronto in the winter, it’s not bad. I definitely had moments where we shot in beautiful houses, in beautiful restaurants, these lovely locations, and I was definitely would turn to people that I also worked with on Handmaid’s that were part of my team and was like, ‘This is very different than the woods in the middle of the night and the snow.’”
Serving as an executive producer as well as star, Moss brought in Kerry Washington and Kate Mara to complete the series’ trio, as showrunner Annie Weisman noted she was surprised by which of the roles Moss wanted to play “because it wasn’t what I expected given her recent work.” She was indeed looking for a shake-up, though, and Wesiman added Moss “really wanted to work with other actresses that she was a fan of, she doesn’t usually get to do that. She’s usually the lead, usually has a guy, but to work with people of her caliber in ensemble, that was really appealing to her too.”
Kerry Washington, Kate Mara and Elisabeth Moss
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Mara has been a longtime fan of Moss and known Washington since they were since teenagers, while Washington — who is also an EP — joked that when Moss gave her a call, “I was like, ‘Oh God, I hope the material’s good because I really want to work with her.’”
It was Moss’ plan from the start to bring together “three women who have all led their own shows and give them a show where they each get to kind of carry the ball for a while,” she noted, as the series is structured with a couple of episodes from each woman’s perspective. “You don’t see that very often; you see an ensemble of women or something that’s more split throughout the episodes, but to get almost three shows in one show and then a fourth show that has all of us in it is something you don’t really get.”
The team also decided to make some changes between the book and screen, including setting the story in L.A. and tweaking how it all comes to an end. Washington explained, “We wanted to make sure that people who loved the book still had some exciting surprises to experience. We need that audience, we need them to be talking and wondering too.”
Imperfect Women, which also stars Joel Kinnaman, Leslie Odom Jr. and Corey Stoll, starts streaming March 18 on Apple TV.
