Some of the states in the United States
have gone all the way to Gilead, pretty much,
without the outfits.
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When people are scared they tend to become
willing to give up civil rights in favour of somebody
telling them that everything's gonna be okay,
just do what I say.
So, the population as a whole
becomes more authoritarian and xenophobic I have to say.
And then came the election in 2016 right in the middle
of the filming of season one of "Handmaid's Tale".
Everyone woke up on the morning of November the 9th,
everyone in the show woke up and thought
we're in a different show.
Because the frame around the show, the way in which
it would be viewed, had changed.
And that has continued as the present
American administration has become more hostile
to women's rights,
and various states have become more hostile.
So, obviously the show seemed more of a possibility.
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I'm not surprised, because it's happened before.
The younger you are the easier it is to surprise you,
(laughs) because you, you haven't seen
the cycles happen before.
And at the time of the election
when I was in the United States, young people were going,
"This is the worst thing that has ever happened."
And I was going, actually it's not, there are worse things.
There have been worse things
and there could be worse things.
And the United States is not
an authoritarian dictatorship yet.
There's a lot of pushback, kickback, resistance
to these sorts of regimes coming in.
But the results, they were a pretty concerted effort
to undermine The Constitution, destroy the rule of law.
That's pretty worrying, and destroy the Free Press.
So, those are worrying signs.
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It's a show. (laughs)
It's a television show.
It's in the book, but it's more in the background
of the book.
So the people making the show
have delved into the book a lot.
And they have the same rule that I had for writing the book,
which is you can't put anything
in that hasn't already happened.
So, they're making visible and graphic things
that are background and remembered in the book.
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You know, (laughs) it kinda doesn't matter whether
I'm happy or not, because I don't have any control over it.
I had no control over the television rights,
they went with the movie rights of 1989.
The movie was sold to a distributor who went bankrupt.
The assets were dispersed and nobody who knew
had the contract for several decades.
Turned out to be MGM, much to their surprise.
So it is they who have the rights.
They made a deal with Hulu.
None of that had anything to do with me.
But I was lucky, because the team that got it
is a very dedicated team, and they have an excellent
designer, wonderful directors, dedicated writing room,
they do a lot of research, and wonderful actors,
so it could have been otherwise. (laughs)
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Well, there have been positives as well,
Ireland for instance.
Big success story, much exceeded their expectations.
A lot of ripping off of the Band-Aids here and there
around the world.
I would say Argentina is very close to getting
some sort of rational decision.
What is disturbing me about pushbacks
against women's rights,
well some of the states in the United States have gone
all the way to Gilead pretty much, without the outfits.
And that is, that is nothing to do
with love of little babies.
If you really love little babies you would pay for
the prenatal care, the natal care, the medical bills,
and the support of those women who have children.
But these people are not thinking like that at all.
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There are lots of other examples in the world and history.
There's been a lot of baby stealing. (laughs)
That's certainly in the books, and one of those
was in Argentina, but Hitler did it too.
And there have been things that weren't quite overt,
which were, you know, the big scoop of indigenous children
in Australia, in Canada it happened,
in the United States.
So this is history and when you had human beings
doing something, you know that they're capable of that,
and they can do it again.
And some people say, but it's so beautiful.
They think a dystopia should be ugly-looking.
But a lot of dystopias aren't.
You know, that's the thing about them.
They do have this visual appeal.
Hitler wanted to be an artist, and the thing that interested
him the most about his own regime was designing
the costumes, isn't that weird?
Yeah, he liked the showtime aspect to it.
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Save the oceans.
So what you're breathing right now is a result
of natural, biological activity on the planet.
And 60 to 80% of that oxygen is made by marine algaes.
That's why I say, top of the list, save the forest,
then we save the oceans, then we can argue
about the other things. (laughs)
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