Elisabeth Moss on Shooting the ‘Train’ Episode of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

It had been over two years since audiences saw June (Elisabeth Moss), Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) and their babies board a refugee train out of Toronto on Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” So when the sixth and final season returned earlier this year, naturally, no time had passed, and the show picked up exactly where they’d be left.

Much of the episode takes place on board that claustrophobic train. “Anyone on the outside might go, ‘Oh, that shouldn’t be too hard. And anyone on the inside knows that that is incredibly challenging, and it really was so,” says Moss, who directed four of the season’s episodes, including “Train.” Speaking at the show’s FYC panel, Moss said, “We saw all of the departments that came together. Everyone had to bring their A-game. Everyone learned something new, and we all were doing things we’ve never done before, across the board, from prep, production and post. It felt like everybody was stretching themselves with that episode and really challenging themselves.”

Joining Moss were Bruce Miller (creator/executive producer), Warren Littlefield (executive producer), Yahlin Chang (Co-Showrunner/Writer), Elisabeth Williams (production designer, producer), Nicola Daley (cinematographer), David McCallum (supervision sound editor) and Adam Taylor (composer).

Moss revealed she worked closely with Daley and the art department. “We spent three days inside the train just figuring out how we were going to shoot it.”

Williams admitted she was afraid of the train. Discussing her work, Williams was supposed to have five cars, and ended up in one and a half. On navigating that challenge, Williams said, “For the art department, it was great because it made us think about things differently.”

Daley, who had worked with Moss on season five, had talked about ways of bringing color back into the story and the idea of using color as a contrast. In approaching the cinematography and lighting of the episode, Daley tracked a journey of light. She explained, “As you go through, you start with the idyllic flares, and she’s with the children. As you’re going through the scenes, the contrast comes in. There’s sunset, there’s dusk and night, and then we move into what Lizzie and I call a bit of a zombie movie.”

In collaborating with Moss, Daley revealed their passion for telling a story with a camera. Daley said, “Those slow pushes in like on the train with Serena and June, or a very slow pull out, just psychologically telling you the story with the camera. That’s very important.”

Complementing the visual work was the sound of the series. In composing the music, Taylor leaned more into the use of orchestra and getting larger and cinematic, particularly for that episode.

Moss, who is a music head, revealed how, as a director, the score is everything to her. “I have to be pulled back all the time because I like wall-to-wall…as loud as possible.” Moss went on to say, “We got to collaborate even closer because you came to set.”

The train was new to the series, and was a sound that McCallum, who has been with the show from the very beginning, had not done before. Diving into his process, McCallum explained he found it exciting. “We had a train that felt like a literal metaphor of what we’ve been doing all along, and now, here we are grounded on the train.”

In the episode, the train changes in terms of how many people are on the train and what the characters within the scenes are feeling. “We needed to build that because it does tie in to what June and Serena are experiencing, and the pressure, and the crowd turns on that. That was something we paid a lot of attention to, when and how do we start creating a sense of the train?” McCallum added, “When people talk, they don’t want other people to hear them. And it’s been that way from the very beginning, very first episode, people talk very quietly. So when June and Serena are having their conversations, they are talking very quietly, which is the complication, both technically, because inside the train it’s making noise from the set, but also, we want to make the train noisy, loud and busy and full. So there’s a lot of pushing and pulling, and it was really fun to explore that.”

One intentional decision was not to have any sound in the train in the beginning, and use all score. It would lead up to the “massive moment” at the end when June pulls the break. “It was a slow step to get there, and we didn’t want to overplay our hand.”