SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Execution,” Season 6, Episode 9 of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” now streaming on Hulu.
Max Minghella’s Commander Nick Blaine is no more.
Near the end of the penultimate episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” what had been a relatively simple piece of sabotage turned into a suicide mission for Bradley Whitford’s turncoat Commander Joseph Lawrence. He was forced to board a Commanders-only flight with an explosive device he’d hoped to leave behind before the others arrived, but when Commander Wharton (Josh Charles) invited Lawrence onto the plane, he had no choice other than to join them. Unaware of what awaited them was Nick, who spent his final moments aloft asking Lawrence whether June was all right, and then recalling that she’d often told him to leave Gilead behind, which he’d ignored.
Nick was right to be concerned. Previously in the season, Nick, whose vexed love affair with Elisabeth Moss’ protagonist June has provided the show its central bad romance, promised her he’d finally bring her to freedom — after having already exposed June’s plans to Commander Wharton, Nick’s archconservative father-in-law.
Through the run of the series, Nick’s vacillations between attempting to help June and a persistent loyalty to the theocracy that’s grinding her down have made for a complicated drumbeat underneath the show’s action and politics: He’s loyal to her, except when his loyalty to the state and the strongmen who lead it gets in the way.
All of which has been brought to life by Minghella, a past Emmy nominee for the role and a filmmaker in his own right. (“Shell,” a film he directed starring Elisabeth Moss, played the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.) Speaking to Variety from a film set in Wales, Minghella illuminated his thoughts on the complicated loyalties within Nick and what ties this particular radicalized young man does — and doesn’t — have to our present political moment.
What did it mean for you that, in Nick’s final moments, he’s discussing and thinking about June?
It felt very poignant — and consistent with the character and how he’s functioned in the show. He’s really been driven by that relationship. It also was lovely to finish with Bradley, who has become such a dear friend outside the show. That felt right to me, too.
Courtesy of Hulu
It’s interesting that your character and Bradley’s are discussing June, because Nick and June had such a fractured love story throughout the series — they had real feeling for one another, but it was all structured and warped by the insane political situation around them. In many ways, they were at odds up until the end.
I don’t even know if it was the original intention. Lizzie and I didn’t know each other before we started shooting this show. We were relieved to discover that we had not only, I think, some chemistry together on screen, but also really connected as creative partners. So that was probably reflected more in the narrative. I always looked forward to their scenes, and I think she did too.
I imagine that, over time, the writers began to write toward the chemistry and relationship you two shared.
I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve always been blissfully unaware of the inner workings of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” mostly out of trust in the writing team and the creative leadership of the show. It’s been wonderful not to have to think too much about these kinds of decisions.
I find the character of Nick to be very poignant because — and I hope this doesn’t offend you — he’s fundamentally weak. And so he is very easily led by strong male figures, which is how he first gets involved in Gilead, and what keeps drawing him back toward its leadership. Was it challenging to play someone that slippery and indecisive?
That has been there since the first season. We don’t tend to know a huge amount about the backstory of the characters in this show, but in the first season, we were offered small flashbacks of who each of these people were before this all happened. In the case of Nick, you really, in a short amount of time, get a clear sense of who he was, and how his combination of a lack of education and, clearly, an abusive upbringing has led to him clinging to paternal figures that show up over the course of the story.
I thought Josh was a really clever piece of casting for this reason, and Josh and I talked about this a lot. You see a lot of this in the real world: I think that young men who get fundamentalized or can easily be led astray are often looking for a strong male role model that they might lack in some way. So I thought that was quite clever. And I thought that Wharton is the worst man we’ve had in Gilead, and yet he’s probably the most self-possessed and assertive. So while he’s a very malevolent character, I think there’s a security that leads Nick astray.
Are you familiar with the so-called “manosphere” — this alternate media landscape where podcasters and content creators are sharing right-wing-coded ideas about what it means to be a strong man?
I’m not hyper-aware of that. I saw that show “Adolescence,” and I think it touches on some of that stuff you’re talking about. This is probably not the answer you’re hoping for, but what I’ve always found so interesting about “The Handmaid’s Tale” is that it’s a text from 1985, right? And it’s quite timeless in the themes and ideas it’s exploring. The show has had a kind of classical bent, and I’ve always leaned on that — it’s steeped as much in real history as it is in classical literature. And I’ve always enjoyed the melodramatic arcs of the show. It doesn’t shy away from the operatic elements of the story.
I think what you’re saying has to do with what Margaret Atwood has said — that her novel isn’t intended to be about present-day America, in that she can point to scenarios throughout history of misogyny and abuse.
We’re guilty of thinking that something is new when it’s actually cyclical in our history. We often think some of the ideas we’re engaging with are happening to us for the first time, when they echo in eternity.
Courtesy of Hulu
Speaking of the archetypal aspects of Nick himself, that same weakness we discussed brings him low. Earlier in the season, after promising to June he was finally going to break with Gilead and move with her to Paris, it’s revealed that he had betrayed her plans to Commander Wharton. Were you surprised, reading that in the script for the first time?
It wasn’t like I discovered the information as I was reading it. Lizzie and I were talking together, on a different project, before this season. So for the first time, I was quite privy to the direction of the character [before receiving scripts].
Transparently, I was very surprised by where they were going to take Nick in Season 6, because it was quite different to how he served the show previously. Not to get too macro about it, but the Nick and June relationship has been a reprieve from the more tense thematic elements of the show. And so to ground that relationship, then, into some of the darker, more nihilistic points-of-view that we have to explore in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” I was surprised by it — but interested in it as an actor. And certainly nobody could accuse them of pandering.
I don’t know that I would have played everything the same in the past had I known that was where we were going to land. But that’s probably just naiveté on my part, so I wouldn’t say there was any shock. I just thought it was an interesting and bold decision.
I would agree that it’s not a final season that is pulling punches.
It’s really hard to finish a show. I’m not jealous of anybody who’s responsible for that. But as I watched a lot of the episodes recently, I found it tremendously satisfying to see again — on a visceral, emotional level — revenge being delivered in a satisfying way. And I hope that audiences will enjoy not only the dense aspects of the show but also some emotional retribution.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
