“This is going to sound wanky,” says Max Minghella over the phone from Los Angeles, “but I really love stories about women. If you go to my Netflix, the sections that they recommend are ‘Thrillers with a Strong Female Lead,’ ‘Comedies With a Strong Female Lead,’” he continues. “I find women more interesting to watch on a lot of levels, and I like the idea of being involved with something I would watch.”
We are discussing Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, which, aside from the odd short, marks Minghella’s first project as an actor since Into the Forest (2015). “I took a couple years off acting and was mostly producing for those years,” he explains. “I found I wasn’t very good at it—it’s not a skill set that I possess.”
It was, in part, the quality of The Handmaid’s Tale that lured the 31-year-old North London native back in front of the camera. Based on Margaret Atwood’s alarmingly prescient 1985 novel, the 10-part series takes place in a fictional future America, a totalitarian patriarchy in which every individual is relegated to a specific role. Offred, the show’s narrator played by Elisabeth Moss, is a handmaid—a walking womb assigned to an elite commander and his wife who are unable to have children. Minghella’s character, Nick, is a driver, another low-status member of Offred’s commander’s household. Or at least, that’s what he claims to be. He might be a spy for a group of rebels or, worse yet, a double agent reporting on the commander and his associates. “I feel like he’s true to the Nick in the book, but at the same time, he’s investigated and looked at more thoroughly,” Minghella notes. “It’s Lizzy Moss’s show, 100-percent, but we all have very, very interesting arcs. They gave me a lot of weight and some juicy stuff. I felt like it was one of the more challenging acting things I’ve gotten to do.”
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