{"id":670271,"date":"2025-05-20T08:59:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T05:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-handmaids-tale-nick-and-lawrence-deaths-actor-interviews\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T08:59:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T05:59:19","slug":"the-handmaids-tale-nick-and-lawrence-deaths-actor-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-handmaids-tale-nick-and-lawrence-deaths-actor-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Nick and Lawrence Deaths: Actor Interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from season six, episode nine of\u00a0The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, \u201cExecution.\u201d]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s no such thing as a good Commander.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>\u2018s <\/em>writers have been passing along that message to viewers throughout the sixth and final season of the Hulu series<\/a>. When Nick (Max Minghella) shocked his lover June (Elisabeth Moss) with the Jezebel\u2019s betrayal, her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) argued it\u2019s because he\u2019s a Nazi. When Wharton (Josh Charles) surprised his new wife with a handmaid on their wedding night, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) remembered June\u2019s warning: Wharton can\u2019t be a good man, because he\u2019s a man of Gilead.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet killing three High Commanders is still a shocking final-season surprise: In the penultimate episode, titled \u201cExecution\u201d (written by co-showrunner Eric Tuchman and directed by star Elisabeth Moss), Nick Blaine, Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford) and Gabriel Wharton all perished. Lawrence was planning to plant an altitude-triggered bomb on a plane of High Commanders and flee while working with June and the Mayday revolution to take out some of Gilead\u2019s most extremist male leaders. But when Wharton (Charles) and the others arrived early, Lawrence made a self-sacrificial choice to get on the plane and carry out his agenda. At the last minute, Nick joined them on the plane.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe poignant final scene between June allies Nick and Lawrence saw Minghella and Whitford, who are close friends in real life, reflecting about the heroic former handmaid. Lawrence knew it was their final conversation; Nick did not. \u201cShe told me to give all this up,\u201d Nick said to Lawrence, who replied, \u201cYou should have listened to her.\u201d Lawrence had a touching goodbye with June before he stepped on the plane, but Nick and June \u2014 the show\u2019s biggest romance since season one \u2014 never got that moment. When June watches as the plane explodes in the sky, her emotions, conflicted and raw, also speak for the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe deaths are a turning point in the final season resistance against Gilead. Earlier in the episode, the majority of the female cast was nearly wiped out when June, a newly revolutionized Aunt Lydia, undercover CIA agent Aunt Ava (D\u2019Arcy Carden), Moira (Samira Wiley), Janine (Madeline Brewer) and other handmaids were almost hanged to death as punishment for murdering Commanders in episode eight\u2019s wedding night coup. But just as June screamed the handmaids\u2019 rallying cry, \u201cDon\u2019t let the bastards grind you down!,\u201d Luke, former Martha Rita (Amanda Brugel) and Mayday fighters arrived to save June and the women as planes invaded the Gilead-run Boston.<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, in separate conversations with The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>, Minghella, Whitford, Moss, show creator Bruce Miller, Tuchman and season six co-showrunner Yahlin Chang, and executive producer Warren Littlefield share how they decided on and carried out a moving end for two of the show\u2019s most influential characters as the series heads into its final episode.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tERIC TUCHMAN [writer, season six co-showrunner] <\/strong>We decided on Nick and Lawrence\u2019s deaths when we were first breaking the season. Once we decided on Nick\u2019s betrayal midway, that led to his fate \u2014 and Lawrence\u2019s combined with that. We pitched the season to Hulu, MGM [Television], Lizzie [Moss goes by \u201cLizzie\u201d<\/em>] and all the creatives, their deaths included. Hearing that part of the pitch made Lizzie raise her hand and say, \u201cI want to direct that one, too.\u201d She was already directing the finale. She was on board immedia<\/a>tely, as was Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tELISABETH MOSS [\u201cJune\/Offred,\u201d executive producer, director]<\/strong> I was in Paris shooting The Veil <\/em>when they pitched us the whole season, outline by outline. I hung up from that meeting, and I said, \u201cI have to direct episode nine.\u201d I humbly requested and they very kindly said yes. If Nick and Lawrence are going to go, it has to be me.<\/p>\n

\n\tTUCHMAN<\/strong> It\u2019s such a huge moment in the show. It hopefully has a lot of impact. She recognized that would be really juicy to direct. <\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tHigh Commanders Wharton (Josh Charles, back right), Lawrence (Bradley Whitford, front right) and Nick (Max Minghella, front left) in their final scene. \u201cHe exudes power, but with a velvet glove and I wanted a flame thrower underneath that velvet glove,\u201d Charles previously told THR<\/em> of how he played Wharton. \u201cHis brutality, hopefully, would be even more intense because of his kindness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Steve Wilkie<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tYAHLIN CHANG [writer, season six co-showrunner] <\/strong>Lizzie pitched it to Max first on the set of their indie movie Shell<\/em> [directed by Minghella that starred Moss]. She told him something like, \u201cYou\u2019re going to die in the coolest way.\u201d (Laughs<\/em>) So she kind of prepared him.<\/p>\n

\n\tMAX MINGHELLA [\u201cNick Blaine\u201d]<\/strong> We shot Shell<\/em> right before this final season. We\u2019d been working together for quite some time and she was letting it slip as to what the direction of the season was going to be, and she was very excited about it. So I was clued in quite a long time before I even read the script<\/a>s.<\/p>\n

\n\tTUCHMAN<\/strong> Max recognized it was a very honest look at his character, and that we\u2019re not trying to idealize or romanticize Nick anymore. To Max\u2019s credit, he really embraced everything.<\/p>\n

\n\tMINGHELLA<\/strong> Nick was under tremendous pressure and when people are under pressure, they don\u2019t always think rationally. I think [when Nick told Wharton about the Jezebel\u2019s coup] that he assumed Wharton knew the answers already, and that it was a test more than an actual interrogation. I think Nick genuinely didn\u2019t anticipate what the consequences of that conversation were going to be, and I don\u2019t think he would have given those answers if he had known the implications.<\/p>\n

\n\tBRUCE MILLER [creator, writer, executive producer] <\/strong>Nick meant a lot to June, but all the other things that he was were not really things that would connect with her. Max has been amazing at playing a character who is a citizen of Juneland. Nick doesn\u2019t really have loyalties anywhere else and that catches up to you in a place like Gilead. If you\u2019re not loyal to one side or the other, you\u2019re in danger from both sides.<\/p>\n

\n\tTUCHMAN<\/strong> In The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> book [by Margaret Atwood], I don\u2019t think Nick speaks. And in the pilot, he has very little to say. You get the vibe between him and June that there\u2019s something cooking, but going off of just that as an actor, you wouldn\u2019t know. It\u2019d have to be a big leap of faith that the writers are going to do right by you. That\u2019s to Max\u2019s credit that he saw that from the beginning.<\/p>\n

\n\tMINGHELLA<\/strong> It\u2019s bizarre how much I liked playing Nick. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re\u00a0particularly similar, but I found him very comfortable to play. This is a very poignant way to end to me. I felt like a grounded version of Nick, and what I was really impressed by was how much it was not what I thought it was going to be. It\u2019s such a compliment to everybody who works on the show that they came up with something really inventive and still very much within the context of the show. I think the turn was in the decisions he made in that scene with [wife] Rose [in the hospital]. I looked at it as a morality play. The moment you make a psychological decision like that, the world will karmically punish you for it, certainly in the context of this story.<\/p>\n

\n\tMOSS<\/strong> I feel like Nick was not the person June fell in love with. So as much as she can mourn the loss of the person she fell in love with, it won\u2019t trump the loss of the women [who were killed] at Jezebel\u2019s. But there is pain there, too. I\u2019m not going to say there wasn\u2019t complexity to seeing him at that wedding and June not knowing what was going to happen to him next. Of course, there\u2019s a lot of complexity [seeing him step onto the plane].<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tBradley Whitford said after shooting his final scene, \u201cI remember calling my wife, Amy [Landecker, who appeared as recurring character, Gilead wife Mrs. MacKenzie], because I was really, really sad. I wasn\u2019t on from the beginning but it\u2019s been eight years. I do not take this show for granted.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Steve Wilkie<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tMILLER<\/strong> I know it\u2019s controversial, but it felt inevitable that June was going to lose Nick this way. They\u2019re fighting on opposite sides and eventually, one of them is going to come upon the other at a time where they could die or sacrifice themselves. Gilead is a terrible, brutal, death-filled world, and there\u2019s a lot of loss. Part of Nick\u2019s backstory is that he was very involved in Gilead\u2019s version of January 6. He\u2019s considered one of the OG people who wasn\u2019t going to be forgiven by the U.S or Canadian governments. He put his lot in with those people.<\/p>\n

\n\tCHANG<\/strong> There are certain things about Nick that June is blind to and that our viewers, and we as writers, are blind to because we\u2019re invested in this romance. For Nick to have risen to be part of the Gilead power regime \u2014 to be an Eye from the beginning, all the way through to becoming a Commander \u2014 he has done some bad things and we haven\u2019t shown them so it was convenient to forget. But one of the themes this season, which you see with Wharton and Nick, is that there is no such thing as a good Gilead Commander. If you\u2019re a man who is powerful in Gilead, it means you are touched by some of that Gilead corruption.<\/p>\n

\n\tMINGHELLA<\/strong> I\u2019m only reading scripts I\u2019m acting in, so I wasn\u2019t fully conscious of this more malevolent side to Nick. It was definitely a surprise reading how the show\u2019s perspective on him shifts so dramatically in season six. But I saw it as a way to explore a facet of this character that I haven\u2019t played yet, and that\u2019s a pretty interesting thing to get to do six seasons into a series.\u00a0I\u2019m working now on something that is incredibly consuming, so I\u2019ve been healthfully distracted. But I hope more than anything people find the narrative overall to be satisfying. It\u2019s been a real labor of love for all of us. Everyone had the best intentions to deliver something that would be first and foremost unpredictable, and hopefully satisfying.<\/p>\n

\n\tMOSS<\/strong> I do think Nick really loved Nichole [who is now going by her real name, Holly]. I think June will tell [her and Nick\u2019s daughter] all of the good things about her father. She\u2019ll tell him how much she loved him and how much he loved her. She\u2019ll tell him how much her parents loved each other and that ultimately, I think he would have done the right thing if he had gotten the chance to do it again.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tMinghella on set for his final episode with director Elisabeth Moss. The co-stars have \u201csuch an adorable relationship off screen,\u201d says Tuchman. \u201cThe two actors are good friends, and they both created these indelible characters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Steve Wilkie<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tMILLER<\/strong> June and Nick\u2019s relationship was amazing. I think their love was amazing, and so unexpected. And it almost saved Nick. He almost made it. June saw a really wonderful side of him, and that was a side we [the audience] saw almost all the time, but he was that guy from the beginning. He was a fucking driver. He was in the Eyes \u2014 he was the Gestapo. He\u2019s a survivor, but he\u2019s not much of a power player, and people like Nick get killed when they get to the top because other people want that power, whether it\u2019s Mayday or whether it\u2019s the other commanders allowing Mayday to blow that plane up. <\/p>\n

\n\tBRADLEY<\/strong> WHITFORD<\/strong> [\u201cJoseph Lawrence\u201d]<\/strong> I\u2019m playing this guy who has done some really horrible things, but you could always tell a redeemable part of him was there. I also know that the show needs a villain, and I didn\u2019t know where this guy was gonna end up. But I was rooting for him to end up on the right side of history. This creative experience means a lot to me. This book means a lot to me. This unfortunate cultural relevance of the show means a lot to me. So there was a lot of anxiety. I\u2019ve had so much luck in my career in not pestering writers, but I was so worried about it that I set up a meeting with Yahlin and Eric.<\/p>\n

\n\tCHANG<\/strong> Bradley came to have lunch with the two of us [after season five]. He was concerned about what was going to happen to Lawrence. He really didn\u2019t want Lawrence to be evil. He didn\u2019t want him to descend into that for the finale season. We had already figured out what we were going to do with him and how he would die, and Bradley was relieved. He was so in from the moment Eric pitched it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWHITFORD<\/strong> It was basically my fantasy of his trajectory. Because, it can\u2019t come too easy. This is not a show that needs a male savior (laughs<\/em>). Lawrence is one of these intellectual guys and he was so excited about this idea of New Bethlehem that it sort of happened again where he got seduced by power and flattery. Even though he has contempt for these guys [the other High Commanders], his savior complex blinds him to what is a pretty obvious possibility, that those guys were gonna turn on him [which is why he decided to help Mayday].<\/p>\n

\n\tTUCHMAN<\/strong> When you\u2019re going to kill off characters, you want them to go out with a bang. You want to have it land in a big way. Literally, in this case, Max and Bradley \u2014 and Josh Charles also explodes \u2014 all three of them have a very memorable end. <\/p>\n

\n\tMOSS<\/strong> With the final season, we were all [from Hulu and MGM to the executive producers] constantly making sure the show moved forward. Do we end in a different place than we began? Don\u2019t be stagnant. Keep going forward, because this is it. There\u2019s 10 episodes left to get to the end.<\/em> No character this season ends in the same place that we begin.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tLawrence (Whitford), here with wife Naomi (Ever Carradine) and daughter Angela, bonded with Angela before his death. \u201cI was happy [with his ending],\u201d he says. \u201cThis guy could have gone the other way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Steve Wilkie<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWHITFORD<\/strong> So I knew what was going to happen, but I hadn\u2019t read it yet. We were shooting another scene and Lizzie said, \u201cDo you wanna read it?\u201d I said yes. But other people [on the cast] hadn\u2019t seen it yet. When they got the script, Ann Dowd left a very sweet message. She just thought it was beautiful.<\/p>\n

\n\tTUCHMAN<\/strong> The moment when [Lawrence] turns to June when he\u2019s about to step on the plane, I scripted it as a little salute, which is nowhere near as moving as what Bradley did. That moment guts me every time. His expression, his gesture to her, is so emotional. Then to see the way he\u2019s sitting on that plane, knowing what\u2019s about to happen is powerful.<\/p>\n

\n\tMOSS<\/strong> That was Brad\u2019s idea. The hand over the heart [really got me]. I mean, I\u2019ve known Brad for 25 years. What matters absolutely the most to me is that the people I am working with feel like they are proud of what they\u2019re doing. That they\u2019re doing their best work. They\u2019re allowed to push themselves. That they have the space to do that and have a voice in the room, on both sides of the camera. That is truly what it\u2019s about. <\/p>\n

\n\tWARREN LITTLEFIELD [executive producer]<\/strong> The look as [Bradley is] getting onto the plane, it breaks your heart \u2014 and this is an architect of Gilead. Gilead does not come to life without Lawrence\u2019s brains, and now we have pain and anguish for the loss of this man. That\u2019s a remarkable journey. It\u2019s a tribute to everything the writers discovered and what Brad did, how he brought that character to life.<\/p>\n

\n\tWHITFORD<\/strong> That [gesture was] one of those things where you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen until you\u2019re doing it. I\u2019d seen [the gesture] before. A friend of mine did that to a coffin of a loved one at a funeral and it was always a very moving thing to me. I also think it\u2019s an extension of what this experience with Lizzie has meant to me and the creative long-term bond I feel with that woman [starting with The West Wing<\/em>]. That wasn\u2019t the last scene we shot, but it was getting there.<\/p>\n

\n\tMINGHELLA<\/strong> It was really a blessed and wonderful way to finish, to have Lizzie directing my last scene in the show. It was fitting to finish with Brad, too. We\u2019ve become so close. I just adore him. I didn\u2019t know him before The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, and now I consider him one of my nearest and dearest friends. To do our last scene together was perfect.<\/p>\n

\n\tWHITFORD<\/strong> The last scene we shot was on the plane. I felt off, because I was just dreading it. It meant a lot to me to be directed by Lizzie, sitting next to Max. Max is the dearest soul to me. These are both young people who really inspire me. I feel this kind of paternal ache with both of them who have been responsible for this very lucky older guy\u2019s incredible creative experience. The [Toronto] crew is the sweetest crew on the planet \u2014 despite whatever [President] Trump may think of Canadians \u2014 and I just didn\u2019t want to say goodbye. I know how rare it is. These shows are alchemy. I get emotional even talking about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was very happy that Lawrence made the choice that he made. I think as he\u2019s listening to Nick and sitting on the plane [in the final scene] he\u2019s thinking, \u201cThis poor kid is another victim of this hellscape that I created.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLITTLEFIELD<\/strong> Finales are unbelievably difficult, because fans are passionate. You don\u2019t want to disappoint. Some really great shows have some not wonderful endings. But I feel very, very good about where we went this season and what we did with the final episode, and the new journey we\u2019re now on with [sequel series] The Testaments<\/em>. Eric and Yahlin had to very carefully land this plane and allow us to take flight with The Testaments<\/em>. That was a lot to navigate, but they did it.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2019s sixth season is now streaming on Hulu, with the series finale releasing Tuesday, May 27.<\/em> Read THR\u2019s final season interviews.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from season six, episode nine of\u00a0The Handmaid\u2019s Tale, \u201cExecution.\u201d] There\u2019s no such thing as a good Commander. The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2018s writers have been passing along that message to viewers throughout the sixth and final season of the Hulu series. When Nick (Max Minghella) shocked his lover June (Elisabeth Moss) with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":670272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/175483_0291RT.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[81390,91537,103563,113035,12570,34346,136042,103565,35908,155449,26458,133115,156497,138507],"class_list":["post-670271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-ann-dowd","tag-bradley-whitford","tag-bruce-miller","tag-darcy-carden","tag-elisabeth-moss","tag-josh-charles","tag-madeline-brewer","tag-margaret-atwood","tag-max-minghella","tag-samira-wiley","tag-the-handmaids-tale","tag-the-testaments","tag-warren-littlefield","tag-yvonne-strahovski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}