It's a sad truth that the behind-the-scenes award categories don't usually yield a lot of female nominees. The directing categories, especially, are typically male-dominated. This year, in the four directing categories of the Emmys, there are three women up for the win, including Reed Morano for helming the pilot episode of The Handmaid's Tale. Morano, whose first feature film Meadowland came out in 2015, has worked as a director of photography for many year, only found herself directing TV shows in the past few years.
Ironically, she also received a second Emmy nod this year for her work as a cinematographer on the pilot episode of Divorce, meaning that she's doubly helping make the Emmy nominations more gender diverse. We spoke with Morano following yesterday's nominations announcement about working on the first three episodes of The Handmaid's Tale, its strange relevance in our society and whether she'll be back for Season Two.
An award nomination is more than just a prize. It shows that the work is valued by peers in your industry.
It's my first Emmy nomination, so that's already an insane thing. We all hoped that everybody else would see all the things we saw in the show. You do all these passion projects all the time, so it's nice when you do the thing that you do and everybody ends up feeling the way you feel about it. It's so much than being nominated for the Emmy. Just knowing people enjoyed what we made is the coolest thing ever. And to randomly also get nominated in cinematography for a pilot I shot a couple years ago is so weird. I'm so excited.
The Emmy nomination reflects an effort to bring more opportunities for women in behind-the-scenes roles.
It really feels promising now for more of an even playing field. It really has helped that a lot of these shows have a mandate to hire women. You get the opportunities. And it's really just about getting the opportunity. Directing is not about gender. Directing is individual to the actual individual. From woman to woman, directing is completely different. It's about giving more than half the population a chance to express themselves, you know what I mean? It doesn't always mean it's going to be more sensitive. There are a lot of women who direct in a way that is even more masculine sometimes than men—and that's not a bad thing either. It's about opening up the pool so we get more storytellers.
Having women in the director's chair was essential to telling the story of The Handmaid's Tale.
Yeah. It was already in motion. That was something they wanted, which was great. We ended up having one male director, on episodes four and five. But the men who work on the show are trying really, really, really hard to do things in way that are honest for women and they're listening and they're trying to listen to the women around them to bring an authenticity to it. It's really a collaborative effort, and I do think it's great to have both POVs. It gives it more of a variety in the storytelling and gives it a more dynamic feel. I think particularly, though, it makes a lot of sense to have a woman direct this show, because it's a point-of-view show. It's meant to put you very closely into the female experience. And, let's be honest, the female experience is pretty different than the male experience.
The cast and crew knew The Handmaid's Tale was relevant to our times, but it also depicts a worrisome future.
When I first started I just wanted to make a cool show. I loved the book, so I was already a fan. At the time I was just thinking it was more about raising awareness. We're so sheltered here typically. For me, what I thought the show would do would be to raise a conversation, like, "Hey guys, this is what's happening in other countries. Right now." For example, in Muslim countries. A lot of the things that happen in the show are commonplace there. But of course, as we started into the production, the campaign started gearing up, and we all started talking about how scary it could be. It could become relevant to what future we could have.
It wasn't until after the election that the show seemed suddenly more real than before.
I remember November 9 was the day I went in to start editing Episodes Two and Three. We had already mostly edited episode one. Of course, that was the morning after the election. Watching the assembly of the episodes, it took on a way darker tone. It became one of those things where we were like, "Well, we already made this. We already shot it this way." In those first few weeks, while I was editing those episodes, there were all these things that started happening, all these laws that started being undone. It felt very surreal.
Morano sees the show as a wake-up call to jostle its viewers out of complacency.
It gave us a greater sense of responsibility with the show. We always felt that way since we were working with a piece of literature, but it raises awareness in a great way. We have this attitude in America of "someone else is going to fix the problem." That's what the majority of Americans have. Or: "I'm just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it." That's doesn't do it. There's a laziness that exists. When I found out how many people didn't vote, for example. I'm not even a super political person, but I made certain to do an absentee ballot when I was shooting in Toronto. That's the message, for me at least, in the first three episodes of The Handmaid's Tale. We're too complacent. We let things happen to us. And you don't have to let things happen to you. You can affect change. Here's a not-so-subtle warning. Get off your ass and do something about it. And there have been interesting side effects from it, like people protesting in handmaid's costumes. That was incredible. It's a great way to do a silent protest and freak people out.
The show can be difficult to watch. It was equally jarring to film it.
There were so many! The pre-ceremony, when they're in the living, was so weighed. And when Offred meets Serena Joy and the Commander for the first time. I got chills in so many scenes. And the actors are so talented, and they all totally embodied their characters. But I would say the salvaging—when the handmaids have to kill the guardian who raped a handmaid. That one I knew was going to be very difficult to watch. There's something raw and graphic about it. I remember I had my camera operators go around and film all the handmaids in the circle. It was all these background actors from Toronto, and there were so many amazing faces these women were making. They were giving it everything. It was really powerful. It was emotional for everybody.
The TV show deviates from Margaret Atwood's novel, but there was great care to make it fit the original storyline.
There's a lot of really bizarre, fucked up situations in the story. But at the end of Episode Three with Alexis Bledel's character—when there's female genital mutilation—that didn't happen in the book. That, for me, was one of my favorite scenes we did from all three episodes. The scene meant a lot to me. It was so weird and so disturbing. Myself and Alexis tried to imagine, "How does a woman react to that when she finds that's the thing that's been taken from you?" I feel like the writers did a great job of trying to imagine the world outside the pages of the book. I think it's an opportunity for really rich storytelling to come, too.
Morano is hoping to continue working on the show in its second season.
Of course we were talking about it. They wanted me to come back to do the beginning or whatever I could do. But I have a movie that I'm prepping that starts shooting in October and goes until February, so I'm pretty much booked. But you never know. The schedule could change. I just can't commit yet. I'd love to come back, though.
