“The Handmaid’s Tale” DP Nicola Daley on Bringing the Story of Elizabeth Moss’s June Home

The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale picks up where it left off: on a train driving away from Gilead. June (Elisabeth Moss) is aboard, headed for Alaska, and so is her former tormentor, Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), the latter woman’s fortunes in Gilead having tumbled after the death of her husband, Fred (Joseph Fiennes). Each with a child in tow, June and Serena are seeking safety, but neither will keep it once they find it.

Knowing that Season 6 would pick up a few hours after the last season left off, cinematographer Nicola Daley’s (Gangs of London, Halo) first focus was how best to spend 45 minutes of the season opener on a train. She and the crew started talking about the episode six months before even starting prep, and at Moss’s suggestion, used an LED wall outside the carriage to allow the day to fade over the course of the episode and to help the actors experience the wobbles of a train carriage in motion.

“For me, it looks so much better, because you get all that beautiful reflection off the LED wall. The nice shiny surfaces that are in the train reflected all the beautiful light coming off the wall as if it were real,” said Daley, who also added interactive lighting between the set and the LED wall in order to marry the two planes of depth together.

The journey to Alaska is long, and outside the train, an idyllic daylight transforms to dusk. Inside, other passengers realize who Serena is, and a mob forms. “We used Train to Busan as a reference. Obviously, we don’t have zombies, but Lizzie always described the mob as zombie-like,” Daley explained. The mob attacks, June pulls the emergency brake, and at that moment, “I wanted it to go even more chaotic,” the cinematographer said. The actors in the mob pushed on the camera operator, and Daley put in flickering lights and a red emergency brake light, sending the lighting from one extreme to another. “It’s 45 minutes all set in one carriage, so you need that visual interest and that ramping up of tension through the camera work and the lighting,” she said. “I love that episode, because you think it’s going to go one way with Serena and June talking, and then it takes a left turn and gets violent and ends up with her shoving her off the train.”

Serena and her baby land in Canaan, and June makes it to her mother in Alaska. Their stories could have ended there, but both end up drawn back to Gilead—Serena to rule, and June to fight. June’s journey back takes her to the rebellion’s Mayday headquarters, shot in an abandoned ski lodge. “It was just perfect, because it’s got that big room with that massive triangular window. When Lizzie and I talked about episode two, when June comes to Mayday for the first time, Lizzie described it as kind of like a fairytale, like June goes down the rabbit hole,” Daley said. She mixed tungsten and daylight, and when June comes out to the waiting crowd, it almost feels like entering a church.

Meanwhile, in New Bethlehem, Serena is also holding court, with Daley shooting her from below as she reigns over—and is uncharacteristically questioned by—the Gilead wives attending her bridal shower. The symmetry in the women’s journeys is intentional. Back in season five, “Lizzie always described it as ‘Serena and June as Juliet and Juliet,’” said Daley. Even with June in rebellion for the greater good and Serena in it, as always, only for herself, the women are always connected. New Bethlehem, the Gilead-lite where Serena begins to find her way back to the top, is a picture-perfect region on the water where Daley embraced sunsets and aqua colors. With The Truman Show as a reference, New Bethlehem “looks like the real world, but everything’s a little bit too similar and a bit too neat,” Daley said. (In reality, it’s Canada—the exteriors were shot in Crystal Beach, two hours from Toronto.)

Stylistically and sociologically opposite New Bethlehem is Jezebel’s, the house of ill repute where Janine (Madeline Brewer) and other cast-off handmaids are banished. Daley made Jezebel’s shower room, soon to become a site of horror, a cool blue that contrasted with a warmly lit dressing area infused with a sense of decaying beauty. Janine and a shocked Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) first recognize each other in Janine’s hand mirror, a planned moment that sets in motion Lydia’s internal journey toward finally realizing what she has done. Outside Jezebel’s, Daley put Lydia under flickering lights, opening and closing doors, trying to get in, a visual metaphor for the truth starting to flare up in front of her.

Serena agrees to marry Commander Wharton (Josh Charles), then moves to cement her status in Gilead through a massive formal wedding in Boston. The cathedral where the nuptials take place required an enormous amount of lighting, and for Daley, who also shot Fred’s funeral back in season five, the scene felt like coming full circle. An overhead shot reveals a legion of handmaids, bonneted and clustered at the back of the church. “Everybody’s bonnet is facing one way, and then you just see June’s bonnet. Someone said to me, ‘I’ve never seen that shot in Handmaid’s before,’” Daley said. “After six seasons, it’s hard to come up with something that hasn’t been shot before.”

The Handmaid’s Tale is full of unique camera work. With only ten days to shoot each episode, “when I first came on board in season five, they told me, ‘don’t shoot all the coverage. Shoot the story, shoot June’s point of view, and shoot June’s experience of the scene,” Daley said. Eschewing traditional coverage, alongside Moss, Daley continually thought about how to tell the story with the camera. “I think that’s always been a beautiful thing about Handmaid’s, and it carries on through all six seasons.”

The Handmaid’s Tale is streaming on Hulu.

Featured image: THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Train” – June and Serena’s journey takes an unexpected turn. Moira makes a bold decision. Nick deals with a powerful visitor. (Disney/Steve Wilkie) ELISABETH MOSS, NICOLA DALEY (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY)