From the ninth floor of a Lower East Side hotel with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, Emmy-winning actor Ann Dowd is reminiscing about living in Laurel Canyon in the 1980s.
When I mention once making a pilgrimage to the former home of Joni Mitchell, the predominant folk hero of that Los Angeles neighborhood in the late ’60s and ’70s, Dowd recites a verse from “All I Want,” a track on Mitchell’s 1971 album Blue, like a monologue.
“I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun. I want to be the one that you want to see. Want to knit you a sweater. Want to write you a love letter. Want to make you feel better. Want to make you feel free,” she says, concluding: “I say that to myself.”
Dowd, 70, has long been regarded as one of our best (and scariest) character actors. She’s played nuns and mothers, nosy neighbors and FBI agents, and appeared in different roles across four different Law & Order franchises. Starring turns in the 2012 film Compliance and the HBO series The Leftovers, however, paved the way for the part that would win her an Emmy: the fearsome and deeply flawed Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Her emergence as a leading lady over the past decade has inspired a passionate fandom. On the day of our interview, she at long last meets Ali Sivi, creator of the viral X account Bald Ann Dowd: “I’m going to find out today what that’s about,” Dowd says, appearing delighted. Later, Bald Ann Dowd and the real Ann Dowd—in blonde, Hannah Montana–esque tresses—will film a TikTok set to the “What’s Up/Bees in the Trap” sound.
Below, Dowd talks to Vogue about returning to Aunt Lydia for the new Hulu spin-off series The Testaments, which stars Chase Infiniti as the teenage daughter of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) in a new era of the dystopian, oppressive Gilead. (Spoilers for episode six of The Testaments ahead.)
Vogue: You were originally pre-med and had a different career path going. Tell me about that.
Ann Dowd: In high school, I decided I wanted to be a surgeon. I was certain of it. My father was very supportive of this idea—ready for me to do that, to go to Holy Cross College, where he went to school. Well, he died my senior year. So my response to that, in terms of my career choice, just got much more intense: I am going to do it. I’m going to do it for him. I’m going to do it the best way I possibly can.
Now, you’re 18. It just is terrifying. So I came very close to anxiety over the years. Really tough. A lot of studying—and I did plays, and I studied. The plays saved me. Then, come senior year, my dear roommate, who is an amazing person, lost her brother. It was horrible, awful. The two of us were bonded in grief. We found our way together. And she said to me in senior year, “Do you want to be a doctor?” And I said, “No. I want to be an actress.” And she said, “What are you waiting for?” So then I auditioned for acting schools, got into DePaul [in Chicago], and never looked back.
Do you feel like that first experience of major grief has shaped the way you’ve dealt with grief as you’ve gotten older?
Yes, it’s changed the way I deal with life as I’ve gotten older. You realize at some point you could lose that person—that person you would love more than anything. Embrace the time together. Be aware that it doesn’t last forever, that they are gifts—the people we love and being with them, you know? I remember thinking when I was going through it at first, There’s nothing like it, losing someone you love so much. You form parts of yourself that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Once you’d decided on acting as a career, was there a point when you thought to yourself, Okay, this is working. I have a career. This is going to go okay?
Once the decision was made, I never looked back. I have another story for you.
Please.
I waited on tables. That’s how I paid the rent, as many actors do. I was on my way to the restaurant [when I was 29 or so]. I looked across the street and saw a huge theater, and a movie was opening. It was the premiere of About Last Night, starring Elizabeth Perkins, my classmate. Lovely actress and lovely person. And I couldn’t believe I was on my way to waitress and she was at her premiere. When I got home, I sat on the porch and I was saying out loud, “What is going on? How long is this going to take? What’s happening? It needs to happen.” And I heard a very deep voice, very calm, like the one that said, “That’s your husband,” and it said, “You will be all right. You will be 56.” And I said, “56? I am not waiting till I am 56.” Well, when I turned 56, I did Compliance, and that changed my career.
What did you think about returning to the character of Aunt Lydia, who is now running a finishing school of sorts for the girls of Gilead?
The more I come to know her, I can’t get to her fast enough. I find her challenging, passionate. She makes mistakes; she tries to reconcile them. I’ve learned from her, and I think she may have learned a little from me. I don’t know much about patience, perhaps, but I find myself very, very drawn to her still. It’s a privilege to know her character for that long, you know? It really is—especially one you like.
I’m curious how you think of the episode in Handmaid’s where we get so much of Lydia’s backstory, in season three. How would you compare filming episode six of The Testaments to what it was like filming that episode a few years ago?
Well, they’re both so different, aren’t they? And in different parts of her life. When we filmed episode six, it was incredibly helpful for me to understand what she went through to be where she is today. I thought I had understood it. This put me in the experience, and it was remarkably powerful.
The other I loved because I imagined—just because it wasn’t specifically said—she was raised by her father, someone who was cold, very religious; her mother not present, didn’t give her a lot of attention. Very religious: Bible, sex before marriage is the Antichrist. And I think that when that didn’t work out, when she took it too far, that crushed her.
Was there anything you found out in episode six that was different from how you’d imagined her backstory?
Yes, the relationship with Vidala was very interesting, and I loved it. I love her—Mabel [Li]. She’s terrific. What I am put through and what she is put through—that was the most, I think, shocking thing: that I had to actually pull the trigger and that I was willing to do it. That tells you just how far she’s going to go. Can you go further than killing your colleague?
When you’re filming these scenes with Chase, how are you thinking about showing Lydia in a different way than maybe we’d seen her with the handmaids in the first show?
She has a little protection going on for Agnes. And her approach to the girls in general is much gentler. There is no need for the fierceness and fear. It’s just to establish a very polite relationship and get to know her a little bit. So it’s a different approach. I would say more gentle. Softer. And I think, to her credit, she decides, I’m not going to do what I did before. Not going to do it. I’m going to establish an academy. It’s going to be for their good. They’re going to learn how to live in the world of Gilead, and they do.
Working with this cast, where so many of them are in either their late teens or early 20s, has it made you think any differently about the things you were concerned or obsessed with when you were 19, 20?
They’re much farther along than I was at that age. They really are. They’re so together. They’re talented and trained, and they know what to do. They respect the work. They listen. I was not anywhere near there in my late teens. At that point I was deciding between becoming a doctor and an actress. It was a very different time for me. But they are a really wonderful group of young actors, and it’s been an entire pleasure. When they’re together—I’m on the sidelines or watching over there—they’re laughing, they’re telling stories, there’s gossip. There’s just a lot of joy, a lot of fun, and I love it. And then when it’s time to work, they get their act together and they do it.
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You talked about the guilt and shame the character may have grown up with for a long time. A lot of that comes from religion. You grew up religious, correct?
Yeah, Catholic home.
Do you feel like it took time for you to reckon with internalized, I don’t know, guilt about sex and desire?
Oh God. Yes. I was scared to death about the idea of having sex before marriage. I mean, you’re terrified. I came from a loving home. They didn’t have a stick over my head, but I remember saying to my father, “Dad, if you can’t have sex before you get married, it’s going to be a problem. Why? Because they want to get married so they can have sex. They don’t even know if they like each other. They’re just attracted to each other. What kind of idea is that? Ridiculous.” I remember him saying, “I’m glad you thought through that, but you cannot have that opinion.” That’s what he said: “You cannot have that opinion.” “Okay, Dad.” I was a rebel, though. My poor father—drove him mad—and he’s the dearest man in the world. And my mother as well.
I mean, it does take a bit. I went to Mass yesterday, being Easter Sunday, and I was very glad to be there. I would say there are things that I don’t connect with—plenty of things that are said even in the Mass—but I felt very good being there. And there are many good things too. You know, love one another. That was the rule in our house: Love one another. That’s pretty good. I mean, it’s all personal, isn’t it? It’s what you feel good about.
Handmaid’s came out in 2017, in the middle of Me Too. Now that we’ve seen…I hope it’s not the other side of that, but we’ve come through some of these discussions, and now we’re back in a different Trump presidency. What has it been like for you to witness, over the past 20, 30 years, how the place of women in society has changed, what we’ve won and also lost?
It’s painful, you know, what’s happened to women’s rights. I was just reading about that group of men—I don’t even know the name of their organization—that think we would be better off if women didn’t vote. And on top of that, there are groups of women who agree with that and think their place is in the home. If you want to be home in your marriage, knock yourself out. Good for you. But don’t think you have the right to decide for anyone else. Roe v. Wade—come on now.
I remember when we first started Handmaid’s and Trump was getting close to winning, I went to bed in a kind of panic thinking, It’s going to be Hillary. It can’t be him. I woke up and opened the door in the morning to get the paper, and there it was—New York Times: Trump. I remember texting Lizzie [Moss], and I said, “What are we going to do?” And she wrote back in Latin, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” That’s something we have to remember. Use our voices, stay alert, be aware, put the phone down, speak up. Don’t expect someone to do it for you, because that won’t happen. It is your civic duty to speak up in protest.
When you think about this point in your career, what do you still want to accomplish?
Well, I’d say to keep working and opening myself up more and more as time goes on—drop the armor, whatever there is of it, to let it go. I’d love to play Joan of Arc. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe something unusual will come up like that. I want to work on beautiful roles where we see so much in a human being.
What would you say to the 29-year-old version of yourself who was like, “Let’s hurry it up”?
I’d say, “Darling, never give up. Deep breath every day. Focus on the work, not on your emotions.” I mean, I used to do my monologues when I wasn’t working, when I was waiting on tables. I would go to my bedroom and do the monologue just to make sure I remembered how, for heaven’s sake. Keep the love story alive however you can. Keep it alive.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.