“There is a certain kind of unreality to both,” Emmy-winning costume designer Debra Hanson says of going from a light comedy to a dark drama
Debra Hanson claimed Emmy victory last year for designing fashions for “Schitt’s Creek’s” Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara) and family, so it would seem a natural progression that her next project would be… Hulu’s ”The Handmaid’s Tale”? “I did have a project between the two [Netflix’s ballet drama ‘Tiny Pretty Things ‘] so it wasn’t quite going from one extreme to the other,” explained Hanson. “But as I was driving into work today, I did have the thought that even though one is in the sci-fi/fantasy realm, there is a certain kind of unreality to both [series]. Where would you kind of put them, just from a design standpoint, in that some of the clothing is qualified, right? The interesting thing about Season 4 of ‘Handmaid’s Tale,’ and one of the reasons that they asked me to do it was because they felt I could transition it out of codification and change that, refine that and then explode it, you know?” (Spoiler alert!) In the recently-aired installments of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” viewers finally got a whiff of relief (relative term, of course, where this series is concerned) as a seriously wounded June (Elisabeth Moss), Janine (Madeline Brewer) and others finally made it out of Gilead, and attempt to reunite with others who made it out, including June’s best friend Moira (Samira Wiley) and her husband Luke (O.T. Fagbenle). And that also means that the harsh bonnets and status robing created a new challenge for Hanson, who joined the show after three seasons had already aired.
