Lots of your novels are based in a dystopian society. We as humans take
comfort in believing that the future will be brighter than the present or the past.
Post-Trump do you believe this?
Having seen the pushback I actually am quite hopeful because although there is
this desire to roll time back you also see a lot of people saying now that is
not going to happen but it is a struggle you know right now there is a there are
two opposing forces and of course you're optimistic because the mere act of
writing is an act of optimism. Think of all the ways in which it is hopeful
first of all you set out to write a book, you believe you're going to finish it.
That's pretty hopeful! Then you believe that once you finish it it's going to be
good. That's hopeful too. Then you believe someone will want to publish it.
Even more hopefulness. And then you believe if it's published somebody will want to
read it which is very hopeful indeed. So just writing something down presumes a
future reader. You don't write things down if you think nobody will ever read
them it might be you at a future time it might be you reading your own diary that
you wrote five years ago but just recording it means you believe that in
the future somebody will be reading it and that's a pretty hopeful thing.
And I think we've all we've seen some books and things coming along that you might
call relatives of The Handmaid's Tale because remember it was published
first in 1985 which is quite a long time ago and at the time people were quite a
few people people said this will never happen this will never happen in the
United States. Jump cut to 32 years later what can I tell you it's happening.
Not in quite the same way and not with the outfits but there's been a rollback of
women's rights and a push back and we're seeing that happening before our very
eyes which is why people - apart from the fact that it's a very good TV series -
that's why people got so involved in it.
I love The Handmaid's Tale and I also
watched the Hulu series and I'm extremely eager to find out what's
happening in season two. What was it like having to continue the story after
finishing the book?
Well luckily it's not me doing it. There was a writing room
Which has about ten people in it and the head of it is a person called of Bruce and
then there's then there's a number of other people most of whom are female
Bruce said that he thought that he hired all these female writers and thought
they would agree with one another but that wasn't the case since since women
are people. So they thrash it out they have a general story arc and then they
break it down into scenes and they each go off and they write a scene and then
they bring it back and they all discuss it. So it is a group activity I get to
read the script but I don't have any control so I have no veto no writer ever
no writer of a novel ever does when it's a matter of a film or television because
it's it's classic that writers don't like the product and imagine if they had
a veto they could say well I don't approve of this and we're
cancelling this multimillion-dollar project so that's why they never do but
I'm pretty close to Bruce Miller and we talked on the phone quite a bit so I
have input but I don't have final say and when you're making a series like
that there is no one person there's no one person with total control because
when you think of all the people involved in it and any one of those
links might be weak and I think we've been very lucky we've had an excellent
team and season two they've been very faithful to the main idea which is
nothing goes in that doesn't have a precedent in real life somewhere,
sometime. So they have a research team to justify this to me. They will say 'okay so
here's where it happened.'
OK well thank you so much. It's been an absolute honour and blessing.
Thank you and very good luck with your writing and everything that you're doing.