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“The Handmaid’s Tale” sequel “The Testaments,” based on a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood, is expanding the Gilead universe.

“It was very exciting to see this other side of Gilead, with all these privileged people. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was about those at the very bottom of the social structure. Here are the women who are at the absolute top. And it still kind of sucks,” said creator Bruce Miller at French fest Series Mania after the show’s world premiere. 

Set in Aunt Lydia’s elite preparatory school for future wives, the show follows the daughters of Commanders, many of whom have been taken away from their birth parents, and so-called Pearl Girls, recruited from outside Gilead. 

“As Bruce said, it’s a different world entirely. And Lydia is a different person,” said Ann Dowd, who won an Emmy for her role. Her character emerges from a “very crushed place” at the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” 

“She was brought to her knees, literally, in deep and profound remorse. When that happens, you can say: ‘I don’t care. I will keep doing what I’m doing.’ Or you can change the way you see the world, acknowledge what you have done, live with the pain and the misery of that, and begin a new life.”

“I remember those early scripts and how clear they were about who Lydia is. I was raised in a Catholic home and educated by Catholic sisters. They weren’t unkind, but you learn that you’re not special. You have a job to do, so don’t look for attention. Don’t walk away before it’s complete. Get it done.” 

Although the environment Aunt Lydia creates for her students comes with “less pain and suffering,” Gilead’s rules are still strict.  

“I don’t know if [the current political situation] makes the story more relevant today than at any other time, but the interesting thing about Margaret Atwood is that she puts her finger on the points of friction that exist forever,” noted Miller, who first discovered her work in college. 

“That was a long, long, long time ago, and it seemed like the right time to read that book. Then, 25 or 30 years later, I made the show and it still seemed as if ait was built for that time. It’s the same with ‘The Testaments.’ I think it’s more of a reflection on Margaret’s sense of where women are and what things they’re always fighting.”

He added: “As Margaret says, you can look back on any point in history and find horrible things being done to women. But I think having her write ‘The Testaments’ and say there’s hope in Gilead, is really her way of saying there’s hope for women in general. Women will move forward.”

Joining Ann Dowd are Chase Infiniti, acclaimed for her turn in Oscar-winning “One Battle After Another” as the daughter of Tayana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills, and Lucy Halliday. As Agnes and Daisy, they form an unexpected friendship. 

“We were very grateful to have Ann, [producer] Warren Littlefield, Bruce and also Elizabeth Moss, who’s an executive producer, as our encyclopedias for everything. We could ask them any question we had about Gilead. On top of that, they welcomed us into the world with such love and support,” said Infiniti, who “fell in love” with the script. 

“It was so intriguing, and so different from Willa and ‘One Battle’. I thought I would have a hard time with the source material – it’s incredibly heavy. But because of the community that was built on set, anytime I struggled, they were there to catch me.”

According to Halliday, they both felt a “weight of responsibility.” 

“‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was so beloved. It really resonated with audiences, and the books were so brilliant. When you step into it, you want to do it justice. You don’t want to be the cog in the machine that disrupts what already existed.” 

Miller also praised Mike Barber, “The Handmaid’s Tale” veteran who directed the first three episodes. 

“No one knows ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ better than Barber. He also knew what things he would like to do differently and what he could do with a younger cast. He was amazing at building the world.”

Ultimately though, it’s all about Margaret Atwood. 

“Margaret’s very involved in the show, and she’s busier than all of you put together. She’s the busiest 86-year-old I’ve ever met! From the beginning, she was more used to her work getting adapted than I was adapting her work. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was a play, an opera, a ballet, and a movie. She was very loose with it and I was a little stricter,” he recalled. 

She still gets every script and watches every episode.

“She’s the first person I talk to – even before the studio, before Warren. She has to say: ‘Ok, that makes sense.’ When you see her eyes light up, you know you really got something.”

Warren Littlefield added: “Every time we’ve spoken to Margaret, we’ve learned something about the world we live in. We always felt just a little bit smarter.” 

“The Testaments” also expands the color palette of the show, with young female students dressed in pink and purple, and with white reserved for the Pearl Girls. 

“Margaret and I talked about it a lot. We had all these new characters and we wanted to underline they were still cloaked by Gilead. They were still categorized by Gilead, but they were different women,” said Miller. 

“We had discussions about shorts sleeves, tons of discussions about the length of skirts and how much skin you could show. It got weird. You start feeling like you’re naked when you’re wearing your regular clothes, because it’s so restrictive.”

Littlefield observed: “The red robe from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is so iconic. It has been used as a symbol around the world, and it has made us tremendously proud. But you won’t find it in ‘The Testaments.’ That’s part of us saying: This is a new world.”

“Bruce and I had a wonderful experience watching June [played by Elisabeth Moss] come to life. We saw her on the monitor, and we said: ‘I think this is going to work.’ Now, all these years later, we were on the set of ‘The Testaments,’ looking at the monitor and watching Chase as Agnes. It was history repeating itself.”

Elon Musk artificially drove down the price of Twitter‘s stock in 2022 with tweets claiming the social-media company — which he had already agreed to acquire — had underreported how many fake and spam accounts were on its platform, a federal jury found.

The verdict was handed down Friday in a civil trial in California against Musk brought on behalf of Twitter shareholders, in a lawsuit alleging that Musk was attempting to back out of his agreement to buy Twitter or negotiate a lower price. The jury found that Musk’s tweets in 2022 — saying he was suspending his takeover of Twitter (citing his skepticism about Twitter’s claims that spam and bot accounts were less than 5% of the total) — were materially false or misleading. However, the jury also found that Musk was not liable for “engaging in a scheme to defraud investors.”

Musk’s legal team at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan said in a statement, “We view today’s verdict, where the jury found both for and against the plaintiffs and found no fraud scheme, as a bump in the road. And we look forward to vindication on appeal.”

Francis Bottini, a lawyer representing shareholders in the class-action suit, estimated that damages Musk will be required to pay in the matter could run to about $2.5 billion, Reuters reported. “Musk’s ⁠status as the world’s richest man is not a free pass,” Bottini said in a statement. “If you’re able to move markets with your tweets you’re responsible for the harm you cause to investors.”

Musk, 54, is the wealthiest individual in the world with a net worth currently estimated at $814 billion, per Forbes.

The jury found two of Musk’s tweets misleading. On May 13, 2022, he wrote, “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” In the other one, which came four days later on May 17, Musk claimed without providing evidence that Twitter’s user base could represent “20% fake/spam accounts” and that it “could be *much* higher”; he said “This deal cannot move forward” until Twitter’s then-CEO provided proof of the sub-5% claim. During the trial, Musk’s attorneys had defended those tweets as representing his legitimate concerns about Twitter’s spam/bot issues and argued that they weren’t a scheme to depress the company’s stock price.

The class-action lawsuit, Pampena v. Musk, ⁠was brought on behalf of investors who sold Twitter shares between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022. The suit was filed on Oct. 10 2022, after Musk agreed to consummate his purchase of Twitter for $54.20/share, valuing the deal at $44 billion.

Shortly before the deal closed, Musk said that he and other investors were “obviously overpaying for Twitter right now.” Musk had agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20/share in April 2022, then spent several months trying to back out of the pact. After Twitter sued Musk, seeking to enforce the original terms of the merger agreement, he ultimately agreed to complete the deal at the original purchase price.

In July 2023, Musk renamed Twitter as X (his favorite letter of the alphabet).

Separately, Musk is in talks to settle an SEC lawsuit accusing him of failing to properly disclose his initial purchases of ⁠Twitter in early 2022, per a court filing by the agency this week. The SEC’s suit alleged Musk’s undisclosed stock purchases cost other Twitter shareholders at least $150 million because they sold shares at lower prices without knowing that Musk was amassing shares in the company.

Last month, Musk’s SpaceX bought his artificial-intelligence company, xAI, which had previously acquired X. The transaction — valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion — is the largest merger of all time, valuing SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, per CNBC.