“As a man, I'm always conscious of the fact that my voice tends to be heard in a different way than a woman's,” he says. To Whitford, a longtime liberal and political activist, that makes his role on the show-and his personal responsibility to the material-even more impactful. In Washington, D.C., women are marching on Capitol Hill decked out in red Handmaids’ robes to protest laws restricting their reproductive rights. The Handmaid’s Tale, despite its source material entering the world in 1985, is more relevant than ever under the Trump administration. This does not feel like a regular job because of the particular resonance of this story and the urgency of it.”Īs a man, I'm always conscious of the fact that my voice tends to be heard in a different way than a woman's. “That unpredictability does justice to what everybody on this show. “Giving her a realistic and complicated obstacle is really important,' he says. Whitford claims he doesn’t know Lawrence's endgame, and he prefers it that way. Don't read too much into the Commander's apparent thawing, though. Later, June spies the couple bonding over the music, freshly unearthed from a moldy box in the basement. Lawrence longing for the man who courted her with mixtapes decades ago. When Eleanor tries to comfort June, the conversation turns to painful reflection, with Mrs. But it's a really pathetic statement that until the suffering comes to your house, you can't imagine it.”Įpisode 5 sees Lawrence's humanity continue to surface. “Because of his wife, he is understanding part of the consequences of what he's done,” Whitford says, with a caveat: “On the one hand, it's really nice that that's able to open him up.

Intellectually, he's sticking his fingers in the fan.” There’s also Eleanor, his weakness and potential path to redemption.

You're welcome.’” Commander Lawrence entertains June, Whitford says, because “he’s intrigued by strength and bravery and it's resonating with an impatience that is building up in him. “In his mind it's like, ‘You think I'm not aware of the brutality of this? This is chemo. But it'll get too far out and he will lash back,” Whitford explains. “His humanity is peeking out, and she’s luring it out. She presses him on the pitfalls of Gilead, and he engages with her. June’s arrival in Commander Lawrence’s household coincides with his own internal reckoning, and she’s shrewd enough to take advantage of it. There are moments when he gets defensive, but he's open to it.” It’s an overwhelming flick of a gyroscope. In his patriarchal condescension, he's not expecting that. “This guy hasn't been seen or challenged in a long time. 'There was something very surprising to me in the early scenes-this overwhelming, painful, exhilarating feeling that June sees him and challenges him,' Whitford tells. But Whitford considers Commander Lawrence his most rewarding acting challenge of all. In the latter, Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning directorial debut, Whitford's character entered the zeitgeist with his famous proclamation, 'I would've voted for Obama a third time if I could.” That line-directed to his daughter's black boyfriend before he tries to harvest his body as a vessel for aging white people's brains-became a viral sensation, a touchstone for the hypocrisy inherent in white liberalism. For the former, Whitford played Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, the wily scamp with a bleeding heart of gold in Aaron Sorkin's legendary early-aughts White House drama. Only Whitford-of The West Wing and Get Out fame-could perform this precise dance between sardonic humor, chilling indifference, and tender affection.

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