EXCLUSIVE: Rowan Blanchard (Poker Face, Snowpiercer) has joined the series regular cast of Hulu‘s The Handmaid’s Tale sequel series The Testaments, sources confirm to Deadline. She joins the previously announced leads, Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday and Ann Dowd, who returns as her original character, Aunt Lydia.
Blanchard stars as Shunammite, a pampered teen from a prominent Gilead family whose status affords her a certain level of respect and power amongst her peers.
The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments are based on the novel by Margaret Atwood. Like the mothership series, the sequel is created by Bruce Miller, who serves as showrunner and executive producer.
The Testaments takes place in the dystopian theocracy of Gilead more than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. The series is a coming-of-age story that finds a new generation of young women in Gilead, grappling with the bleak future that awaits them.
For these young women, growing up in Gilead is all they have ever known. They had no tangible memories of the outside world before their indoctrination into this life. Facing the prospect of being married off and living a life of servitude, they will be forced to search for allies, both new and old, to help in their fight for freedom and the life they deserve.
Miller executive produces with The Handmaid’s Tale‘s team Warren Littlefield, Steve Stark, and Mike Barker, who will also direct the first three episodes. MGM Television is the studio.
Blanchard was recently seen in Hulu’s hit series Poker Face and opposite Auli’i Cravalho in the American High for Hulu rom-com Crush. Previously, Rowan starred opposite Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs in TNT’s Snowpiercer, recurred on the ABC series The Goldbergs, and led the Disney Channel Original Movie Invisible Sister. On the film side, she starred in Ava Duvernay’s A Wrinkle in Time. She is repped by Paradigm, Untitled Entertainment, and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman.
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