During those initial years of “Mad Men,” Elisabeth Moss worried what kind of roles she might get when it was over.
Then Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake” came her way during a hiatus and put her on a new course. “It settled any fear of what I do next,” she says. “I realized I could do things at the same time during a job and it didn’t really matter.”
Enter: “The Veil,” a spy thriller by Steven Knight that finds Moss as a veteran MI6 agent traveling from Istanbul to Paris with a woman who may not be telling her the truth.
Moss’ character “knows how to get what she wants and how to get something done.”
“I love this genre,” she says by phone. “To get to be that woman in that space was just really exciting. It fulfilled all my expectations.”
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And it gave her an opportunity to play something other than a controlled woman – the role that won her Emmys on “The Handmaid’s Tale.” “I wasn’t planning on doing a television project because that’s my day job,” Moss says. “But then I got the script and it was like the best thing I was reading…I had to go for it. And it always comes down to that.”
To play a spy, Moss did plenty of research (“something I never usually do”) about British agents. Among the insights: Don’t be the one who’s always asking questions. Get the other person to speak. “It’s a very old tactic, so I think I’m probably a little less calculating.”
Traveling with a woman who could be lying requires a great deal of trust.
“They go back and forth all the time,” she says of the characters she and Yumna Marwan play. “Sometimes someone is telling the truth and the next thing they say is a lie. And sometimes they’re being honest with each other and sometimes they find out that none of it was ever true.
“That’s the core of what (writer) Steven Knight wanted. It’s like a chess game. They just go back and forth.”
Moss, conversely, errs on the side of believing the best in people. “At this point, I’ve encountered some people who were not as trustworthy. You learn a little bit more about you…and how you lead people. I can’t be a Method actor. I get bored.”
While making the series, Knight told Moss about a woman who, when she was 65, revealed to her family, “I just retired and I’ve been a spy my entire life.”
“It’s not an easy existence by any means,” Moss says.
While filming, the cast and crew of “The Veil” had to deal with a polar vortex in Turkey, rain in Paris and fog in the United Kingdom.
“I usually winter in Canada (where she shoots ‘Handmaid’s Tale’), so I was fine with it. Everybody was so cold and I was like, ‘Oh my god, please don’t even start.’”
Producing (which she does on “The Veil”) has been a life changer. She got that title and started directing on “Handmaid’s Tale.” That aspect will be hard to leave. Still, as the hit series nears its final season, “I do know what her journey is. I do know where she’s going and, timing wise, it’s kind of the right thing to do. At the same time, if they said, ‘Do you want to do 10 more years?’ I’d probably be like, ‘Sure, why not?’”
“The Veil” emerged from the idea that there was friction among various intelligence agencies when dealing with new threats. Knight went to Europe to research the likelihood and gathered stories. “What I wanted to do with this was take huge issues and boil them down to two people in a car, driving through the snow and the nature of the conversation affects the outcome for thousands of people,” Knight says.
To help separate her character from others she has played, Moss uses a British accent. “I worked on it probably harder than I’ve ever worked on anything,” she says. “I started in September and we started shooting in February. I didn’t want to be thinking about it. I wanted to do the material justice.”
Knight described the character as a “shapeshifter,” able to play different roles and then let them go.
“When she’s playing a character, she’s not lying. She actually more truthful than she can ever be,” Moss says. “I said, ‘So she’s an actress’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘OK. Got it.’”
More seasons of “The Veil”? “I felt we just scratched the surface of who she could be.”
“The Veil” airs April 30 on Hulu.