22 | EXPRESS | 04.16.2019 | TUESDAY
entertainment
HULU
FILM Elisabeth Moss wants to go to an honest place. As Moss tells the story, she was shooting a scene at the Lincoln Memorial for the third season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” when she looked down at her feet and saw the engraved space honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s landmark “I Have a Dream” address. Then, in her red handmaid’s cloak, she knelt down on the marker. Moss, who has forged her character Offred into a feminist icon, didn’t shy away from recognizing the link between the show and some of the political and social issues unfolding in the country. She even calls it cathartic. “I don’t know how many people have this experience of being in that costume on those steps,” she says, “with the president a few blocks away making massive decisions that will affect immigration and the freedom and rights of many citizens.” If the red cloak is now the international protest symbol for women’s issues — whether it’s in support of reproductive rights abroad or against a Supreme Court nominee in the United States — then Moss, or her character, is the face of that t
branch of the resistance. It’s a role she admittedly wishes she didn’t have to take on, but she says she remains honored for the responsibility in the “really unusual circumstance.” “How would that feel for you?” the 36-year-old actor says, calling the situation “nuts.” “The fact that it’s entered the culture the way it has is incredibly unusual. I wish it was fantasy. I wish it was ‘Game of Thrones,’ you know? I wish it was like, ‘This is crazy!’ “But unfortunately, it’s not.” While “The Handmaid’s Tale” is her most celebrated role, Moss will tell you that her next film, “Her Smell” —which hits the D.C. area Friday — was the hardest thing she’s ever done. Alex Ross Perry’s film is an addiction-fueled love letter to the highs and lows of ’90s punk rock, and that subject matter put Moss — who grew up with jazz and blues musicians for parents and adored Paula Abdul — squarely out of her element. “Nirvana wasn’t my thing at all. I just skipped right to Britney Spears,” she says. “That was my journey. I mean, how do you get better than that?” Becky Something, Moss’ character in the fictional biopic, is the toxic, self-destructive frontwoman of the riot grrrl feminist punk movement. She is less Courtney Love and more Kurt Cobain, as well as Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean — those who struggled with a life
GUNPOWDER & SKY
The ‘Her Smell’ star is using a busy 2019 to show off her range
GETTY IMAGES/EXPRESS ILLUSTRATION
Moss’ tale is just starting
Elisabeth Moss lets her hair down as an addiction-fueled rocker in the upcoming film “Her Smell.”
The 36-year-old actor is more withdrawn on “The Handmaid’s Tale” as the feminist icon Offred.
of incredible fame mixed with crippling addiction. “In one sitting, she achieves what she does season upon season on TV — creating a multiyear narrative for her characters,” Perry says. Moss’ striking range was apparent during last month’s South by Southwest festival. One night she was Kitty, the vain, gossipdriven housewife who drowns her insecurities in rosé in “Us.”
The next, she was hard-living Becky. She says she played four different characters in less than five months last year. “It’s not rocket science to me,” she says. “My job is, in a sense, ridiculous. I put on costumes and hair and makeup and pretend to be other people. Then, there’s a hundred people that are in on the game and also playing with you. It’s ridiculous.”
17.4M
TIMOTHY BELLA (THE WASHINGTON POST)
TELEVISION
The number of viewers of the Season 8 premiere of “Game of Thrones” on Sunday, according to HBO. That audience, which spanned cable and streaming, was the largest in the show’s history, histor topping the 16.9 million viewers who watched the Season 7 finale. It also marked a substantial increase in from the seventh season’s premiere, which had 16.1 million viewers. (EXPRESS) Hulu renews “Shrill” for Season 2
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Franklin wins posthumous Pulitzer Prize AWARDS Aretha Franklin is still getting R-E-S-P-E-C-T after death: The Queen of Soul received the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor Monday, becoming the first individual woman to earn a special citation prize. The Pulitzer board said the award was given to Franklin for her indelible contribution to American music and culture over more than five decades. Franklin died Aug. 16 at her home in Detroit from pancreatic cancer at age 76. The Pulitzer board most recently awarded a special citation prize in 2010 to Hank Williams, the country music legend who died in 1953. From the arts world, other recipients include Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, George Gershwin and Ray Bradbury. David W. Blight’s “Frederick Douglass” was named the best work of history Monday, while the biography prize went to Jeffrey C. Stewart’s “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke.” Richard Powers’ innovative novel “The Overstory” won for fiction. The drama prize went to the play “Fairview,” by Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Eliza Griswold’s “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America” won for general nonfiction. Ellen Reid’s opera “p r i s m” was given the music award, and Forrest Gander’s elegiac “Be With” won the poetry prize. MESFIN FEKADU AND HILLEL ITALIE (AP)
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