Our first looks at The Handmaid’s Tale season two have been as dark and foreboding as you’d expect from that increasingly relevant dystopian tale, but here’s a bright spot (all things considered): Marisa Tomei will guest star in an upcoming episode.
Showrunner Bruce Miller made the casting announcement at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, TV Line reports. Tomei’s role isn’t currently known, but the Oscar winner will appear in an episode set in the as-yet-unseen but ominous-sounding colonies. Margaret Atwood’s novel never ventured into those locations, but the show has already deviated in other areas, such as with the revelation of Offred/June’s (Elisabeth Moss) pregnancy at the end of season one. That development is a huge part of the new season, Moss says, which is “about motherhood.” As she told critics, “the child growing inside of [Offred] is a ticking time bomb. It’s a wonderful thing to have a baby, but she’s having it potentially in a world that she may not want to bring it into. Then if she does have the baby, the baby gets taken away from her and she can’t be its mother. It’s a very big part of the season. And it gets bigger and bigger as the show goes on.”