D’Arcy Carden‘s surprise character on The Handmaid’s Tale came with plenty of twists — some of which the actress didn’t even know about.
During the Tuesday, May 6, episode of the hit Hulu series, Carden, 45, made her debut as Aunt Phoebe. But the audience quickly learned there was more than meets the eye with Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) coworker — who was actually part of the revolution.
“It’s always so funny to be a part of something that has a twist, which I’ve weirdly been a part of [many times]. There are many things that have twists or where I play characters that have a twist,” Carden exclusively told Us Weekly. “You really have to weigh, ‘Who do I tell this to? And will I ruin their experience when they watch it?’”
While Carden’s role was already kept under wraps, she had to decide what to tell her loved ones, adding, “When I told my family that I got Handmaid’s Tale, my brother was like, ‘Tell me nothing. I don’t want to know anything. It’s one of my favorite shows and I want to watch it all in real time.’ My mom was like, ‘Tell me every detail. Tell me every single line. Tell me every single move. I’m so nervous you have to tell me beforehand.’ It’s person to person.”
Carden was thrilled to be cast after years of being a fan of the series herself. “It’s been worth keeping secrets about the script. To be honest, there’s so much that I don’t know,” she revealed to Us. “The actors got these redacted scripts, which is such a funny thing. The first script that I got — the last 10 pages were redacted. I didn’t even know if I was in those pages. You got little pieces as you went along, which is really exciting and scary.”
Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a dystopian future. The show is preparing to wrap up after its sixth season — but not before the main characters take part in a revolution to take down Gilead with help from surprise allies, including Aunt Phoebe.
“There’s going to be more to the character than what you see, which is so exciting. I don’t know if I never expected to play an Aunt,” Carden said. “Also coming into the show, I could have been a villain. I could have been dead in the first scene. This is a show that moves and things happen — gigantic things happen — in every episode. So it was so exciting to see what this character would bring.”
Carden teased that with so many “secrets,” a role like Aunt Phoebe meant “figuring out what to reveal and when to reveal it.”
“This character is so layered that it was almost like every single line I have [I would overthink]. I would pull the director aside or the writers who are on set to just [to discuss],” she recalled. “I just love the character so much and I love getting to work with these other characters in this world that I know so well and love so much. I really wanted to rise to the occasion and also do them proud. It was such a gift of a role that I felt a lot of pressure to really deliver — a pressure I put on myself — to them.”
While speaking with Us about getting cast on a show she already loved, Carden praised coshowrunners Yahlin Chang and Eric Tuchman for collaborating with her.
“They told me a lot, which was so generous of them. They didn’t want me to go in totally blind. That doesn’t really help the actor too much. But there were certain things that just couldn’t be revealed,” she noted. “At first it was just one episode and then another. It was sort of slow getting the episodes but I had a good outline of what the season looked like and what my character arc was.”
Carden can’t wait for viewers to see more of Aunt Phoebe.
“This show never fails with twists and turns. There’s no such thing as a filler episode on The Handmaid’s Tale. My character’s story line, it moves quickly,” she told Us. “And [when I was first cast], it was funny because I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be the worst villain they’ve ever had on this show.’ Then I read it and I was like, ‘Oh, great. I’m a hero. I’m a good guy.’”
According to Carden, viewers are in for a wild ride with the show’s series finale.
“As a fan, I was so satisfied [by the ending]. But it’s hard to be satisfied in the world that they created or even the comparison to the world we live in now. But they’ve been fighting this fight for so long and we as the fans have been with them fighting and hoping that they get an inch further and an inch further,” she detailed. “I felt very strong and powerful as a fan and in this role — but I felt like there’s something about Handmaid’s Tale that I think a lot of people feel like it is almost like it’s so intense and so hard to watch that it makes them feel small or weak. For some reason it’s always made me feel really strong and powerful.”
She continued: “These women are fighting against all odds and in the most brutal situations. They continue to fight and they find new ways and they never give up and risk their lives. There’s something about that that feels really powerful to me.”
New episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale are released Tuesdays on Hulu.
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