Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546033
5 0 P E R S P E C T I V E J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 6 It was the fall of 2024, and Donald Trump had just been elected for a second time. For the previous five years, I had been building a career and a life in the United States, a path that began when The Handmaid's Tale executive producer Warren Littlefield engaged my help in Chicago on his critically acclaimed series Fargo. My work with Warren had actually begun earlier in Toronto, in 2017, as Supervising Art Director on the second season of The Handmaid's Tale, alongside Production Designer Elisabeth Williams. After the fourth season, our star and producer Elisabeth Moss brought me to Chicago again to join her new production company, Love and Squalor Pictures, for its first produced series, Shining Girls. I spent the following year in New York and New Mexico as Supervising Art Director on Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne's Poker Face. Those experiences working throughout the United States had me excited to build a future in American television and filmmaking. As the United States entered a second Trump administration, Warren and show creator Bruce Miller asked me to join them back in Toronto as Production Designer this time, to create The Testaments, the long-awaited Margaret Atwood sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. It was an uncanny return to Canada. While the political climate south of the border shifted again in ways that felt increasingly familiar, I found myself crafting a world through the eyes of a generation of girls growing up under the misogynistic regime of Gilead. " Y o u W a n t t o K n o w W h a t I t W a s L i k e f o r M e , G r o w i n g U p i n G i l e a d … ? " T H E T E S T A M E N T S B Y M A R T H A S PA R R O W, P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. LYDIA ACADEMY DINING HALL. PRODUCTION STILL. A