‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Star Max Minghella Breaks Down That June and Nick Kiss
It’s been a painfully long hiatus for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale, which wrapped its third season way back in the summer of 2019 and finally returns with new episodes this week. But for fans of Max Minghella’s Nick Blaine, the wait has been even longer. Nick, a morally conflicted but increasingly powerful cog in the Gilead machine, disappeared midway through season 3 when he was sent away to fight on the front lines in Chicago. This came shortly after June’s devastating discovery that Nick played a key role in the war that allowed Gilead to seize power in the first place.
But in season 4, Nick is back with a vengeance—and so is June and Nick’s forbidden romance. In episode 3, titled “The Crossing,” June is captured, tortured, and blackmailed into giving up the location of her fellow Handmaids. She’s then told that she, along with Janine, Alma and the rest of the escapees, will be sent to a “breeding colony” to live out the rest of their days. As June crosses over a bridge to meet her fate, she shares a moment of tenderness with Nick, who’s been waiting in the wings all along, trying his best to keep her safe within the confines of his position as a foot soldier. They embrace, she walks away from him…
And then, in a perfectly executed moment of pure romantic escapism, she turns back, runs to him, and kisses him. Music swells. Camera spins. It's an uncharacteristically swoon-worthy moment for the show—and a much-needed moment of respite in the middle of a brutally dark episode. Below, Minghella speaks to ELLE.com about how Elisabeth Moss directed that moment, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted shooting, and what a post-Gilead life might look like for Nick.
I want to talk about the sequence on the bridge at the end of episode 3. From the performances to the writing to the camerawork, it felt kind of like a gift to fans of June and Nick’s relationship. What’s your take on that moment?
I think that these two characters find real refuge in one another, and I think in a sort of meta way, that narrative also ends up being a sort of refuge within the context of the show. The show is pretty heavy a lot of the time, and that relationship hopefully alleviates some of the tension. In terms of episode 3, it was wonderful to shoot those scenes because of what Lizzie brought to it as a filmmaker.
The way the camera swoops 360 degrees around them is such a fun, deliberately heightened choice.
Yeah, I teased [Elisabeth] that she’s like Michael Bay meets Mike Lee. There’s a spectacle to the way she shoots, and a rigor to the way she shoots that is so impressive and so technically accomplished. And then she’s also amazing with actors, and I think pushed me harder than I’ve been pushed before. I don’t want to speak for her, but I think she had fun with it. It’s a very cinematic scene, and a very classical scene depicting what I’ve always considered a very classical romance. It has that sort of forbidden quality to it.
Especially in that moment—they’re kissing in full view of Gilead soldiers. Is Nick just throwing caution to the wind a little bit?
Yeah. I mean, it’s very human, isn’t it? It’s like I think in life we can’t choose who we fall in love with, and then we can’t necessarily choose how we behave around people we fall in love with. It’s one of the great things about our experience on this planet. So I think it’s just that simple. I think sometimes the heart triumphs over the brain.
Nick and Commander Lawrence form a pretty interesting alliance this season…
Brad [Whitford] is one of my favorite actors of all time, and we’ve actually become very close away from the show. So I thought it was interesting that they put us together in a fictional context, and I was really curious as to how that would play out. I’m so happy with those scenes, and I think what’s also really fun about them is even though we’re sort of playing this chess match with one another, you can tell that we’re friends and that sort of gives this almost sort of playfulness to these otherwise pretty tense exchanges. Those characters are very similar—Brad says that they both have a removed pragmatism, which I think is a really good way of putting it.
There’s a lot of conversation this season about the concept of justice, and what that means for different characters who have lived through Gilead. What do you think justice would look like for Nick? What’s his endgame?
This is a side note because we keep hearing the word endgame. Do you think people used the word endgame before that Taylor Swift song? Because I’d never heard the term endgame ever before Taylor Swift’s song and then I was like, “What does endgame mean?” Now I hear it all the time.
I mean, I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, so you don’t want to get me off on this tangent…
I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan too! It’s just a credit to her genius that I think she has introduced a word into our collective lexicon that was never there before, and hasn’t been credited for it. So if you’re reading this, Taylor, you should get a pat on the back for endgame’s ubiquitous use during the Handmaid’s Tale press tour.
Now I’m rooting for a Taylor cover track next season.
Why haven’t we done that yet? But yeah, to answer your question about Nick’s endgame, I think he sees protecting June to the best of his ability as his road to redemption. I don’t think he has any expectation for himself beyond that, including his own survival. I think he’s a man who carries a tremendous amount of guilt with him. I can just sort of see this giant heavy sack of guilt on his shoulders every time he walks into a room. I think there’s some reprieve for him in trying to protect this person that he loves, but he doesn’t always succeed and doesn’t always approach that correctly. But I think that’s always his ambition.
Nick didn’t seem to have a lot of direction before Gilead, and within Gilead he’s found more of a sense of purpose. What do you think his life would actually look like, if the regime were to fall?
I could see him doing a simple job. I could see him working at a gas station. I think he’d like something like that, something with cars, something with his hands. He’s not a heady guy, I don’t think. So I could see him wanting a simple life. But I don’t know that he has any comfort with Gilead—I think that he’s very conscious of the toxicity of that environment.
Nick is such an enigmatic character, and very internal. He kind of has to be that way as a survival tactic, but as you’re playing him, how much do you have to understand exactly what he’s thinking in a given scene?
Yeah, I’ve never gotten to play a character for this long, not even close. It’s kind of a fascinating experience. And there are some things that you don’t have to overthink, thankfully, because at a certain point you become symbiotic. If I had to go on Jeopardy! and answer questions as Nick Blaine, I think I’d know how to do that at this point just because of time spent. Going into season 4, I felt a real kind of relaxation with understanding who he is and relating to him. And that kind of opens up a whole other door for the performance. While all the things you said about Nick are absolutely true about him, I do feel a shift in him this season. He seems much older to me this season, and I think that’s because of what’s happened to him in the year where he’s sort of been absent. He’s been in the war, and on a side he doesn’t want to be on. That’s got to fuck somebody up.
You had all just started filming season 4 when things shut down back in March of 2020. What was it like to finally be able to go back to work, albeit with all these new COVID protocols?
First and foremost, gratitude. I think we’re just all so humbled to have a job to go to, let alone one that we all love so much and this one, I think, is meaningful to everybody involved. And here I’m going to show my age a little bit, but in terms of the actual feeling on set, it reminded me a little bit of making movies in the ‘90s. There was something fun about the pace of it. It was a little bit slower, a little bit more taken care of. So, I didn’t mind it. The COVID situation allowed us to really kind of take time with the scripts in a way we've never been able to before.
You’ve often said that you watch the show as a fan. Are there any particular moments from this season that stand out to you from that perspective, anything you found really satisfying?
I love the last scene of episode 10. I can’t give away what it is. But I love, love the scene, and I love what it implies for the future because it leaves the door open for anything. I just can’t wait to see what happens. I’m so curious, genuinely, as to “Okay, what does this mean?” What does this mean for where we take this, knowing that we are doing a season 5? I’m curious about everybody. I feel like every character’s arc this season has been upended, and I’m really curious to see where it’s going, and where all the dominoes fall.
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