Beauty vs Beast: The Gilead Girls
Monday, July 24, 2017 at 2:33PM Happy Monday, Jason from MNPP here with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" fun-time experience. While you were all enjoying Elisabeth Moss' charm offensive on the Emmy Actress Roundtable this past weekend what you should have been doing is baking a birthday cake for her, because she turns 35 today.
Did we all watch The Handmaid's Tale? I'm thinking enough of us did (there was actressing from every angle, after all) that we can go ahead and have this week's contest be between Moss as Offred and her fellow Emmy nominee (not to mention honorary member of Team Film Experience!) the great Ann Dowd. Does Aunt Lydia's religious fervor strike too close to home, or is Dowd's take on the role just too delicious to ignore? You tell me.
PREVIOUSLY To be honest I am shocked that Charlton Heston won any votes in our Planet of the Apes off last week, but he was still soundly beat - Kim Hunter's Dr. Zira took over 81% of the vote. I guess his hands really are cold and dead now. Said Tom:
"Team Zira because empathetic scientists crying out the truth to an unbelieving world seems so important now."
Reader Comments (5)
I'm voting for Elizabeth Moss because we have the same birthday!
Why would anyone be with Aunt Lydia? Are these the same 36% of people who approve of Trump?
Kinda wanted them to cast Charlotte Rae as Aunt Lydia. That would be funny.
Such great scene partners - feeding off of each other and selling the dystopian world better than any production design or visual effects could.
Points to Ann Dowd for consistently unexpected characterization - her apparently genuine care for some of the girls (Janine in particular, striking considering her initial torture of her) adds shades of humanity to her in most unnerving ways. She speaks more like a preacher or particularly disapproving parent than a general or warden, which makes the character all the more intriguing.
Ultimately however you have to go with Elisabeth Moss for a spellbinding symphony of a performance - deeply felt humanity, her drained voice and face, the precision of her furtive glances of longing or fear or paranoia or anger. She spends such stretches of the show with everything on the inside that when she gets to let loose and expose traces of the fury she feels regarding her situation, it leaves you shaking. Brava.
Duncan -- everything you just said except i voted for Aunt lydia (solely from devotion to Ann Dowd who i legit think is one of the best actors in the world)