With The Testaments, Brad Alexander steps into one of television’s most culturally loaded and closely watched worlds. In The Handmaid’s Tale follow-up series, the British actor plays Garth – a boy raised within the rigid ideology of Gilead whose worldview starts to crack after meeting two girls who pull him outside the system he’s always known. Caught between repression and emotion, Alexander brings a curious vulnerability to the role, quickly establishing Garth as one of the most compelling new figures within the expanding Gilead lore. As The Testaments rolls out to critical acclaim, Alexander recently wrapped filming on Charlie Brooker’s upcoming Netflix project – another sharp, albeit very different, exploration of spiralling society.

“We’re dealing with heavy themes here – themes that resonate with what’s going on in the world right now, and really for all time.”

Alex James Taylor: Let’s get into The Testaments – what can you tell me about getting the role? How did it all come about?
Brad Alexander: It was an email in my inbox that said, “Doll House – read for this part of Garth.” Obviously, it was all codenamed, so I didn’t really understand what the project was in reality. There were three or four scenes, many of which made it into the show. On the recall, my manager told me it was a continuation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and that we were shooting The Testaments based on the novel. So at that point, I bought both books. I had seen The Handmaid’s Tale, so I was familiar with the world, but getting stuck into the books was a good thing to do. I did the recall in front of Sharon Bialy, the casting director, Mike [Barker, director and executive producer], and of course Bruce [Miller, creator]. Literally, from getting the tape in my inbox to moving to Canada for six months, it was probably a week-and-a-half, two-week period.

AJT: You shot it all in Canada?
BA: We did, in Toronto.

AJT: How was it being there for that time?
BA: I love Toronto. I really, really liked it, actually. It’s cosy, incredible cuisine, easy to get around. The people are polite and nice. There’s a lot of cultural crossover between Canadians and British people, I feel. I loved it. I didn’t leave the whole time I was there.

AJT: And how has it been being on a show of that size and scale?
BA: Certainly in terms of the scale of the production itself – I’ve been in things that have had similar reach – but being on set where the world is so heavily curated and crafted by every department… I mean, this is a production of real integrity and quality in every dimension. You can really see the work people put in. So it was as scary as it was gratifying, to be honest.

AJT: And your character, Garth, is very much caught between emotion and environment. When you read the script and the book, how did you want to capture those contrasts?
Brad: Yeah. Our Garth differs quite heavily from the one in the book, but both function as a doorway into the world of men. We’re in this extreme patriarchy in Gilead, and both characters are a way for the girls to understand the psychology of men – and their victimhood as well. Men can be victims in this environment, too. So it was really about understanding the approach we were going for in our show, which was that Garth is a Gilead native. He’s grown up in this environment, he’s been propagandised from birth, and he comes from a relatively high-ranking Commander family. He probably had aspirations relating to that until he meets these two girls, who become this completely chaotic influence in his life, bringing all these new, unexplored feelings he hasn’t experienced before. It was a joy to do that, and obviously with the help of Bruce and Mike and the writers – and Gianna [Sobol, co-executive producer] – we crafted the character collaboratively.

AJT: I wanted to ask about Bruce. He’s created this whole world with The Handmaid’s Tale – he must know it so well. What’s it like working with him? How does he convey and communicate that world with you?
BA: Bruce is amazingly collaborative. He’s such an open and sincere figure. I really felt that along the way. We’re dealing with heavy themes here – themes that resonate with what’s going on in the world right now, and really for all time. I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone as sincere as Bruce in his intentions to communicate these themes delicately and appropriately. So he was incredibly open and collaborative, which I really appreciated.

AJT: It must be cool for him to create this secondary world to the first one, and introduce more ideas and characters into it.
BA: Yeah, and shifting the focus from really the lowest caste in Gilead – the handmaids, which is worthy inquiry in itself – to this other dimension of, what about the incredibly privileged girls growing up in this environment? They’re as much victims as anyone else, in a way, but their lives are decorated with this superficial privilege they’ve been brainwashed into believing is worthwhile. I think that new alignment and focus is really interesting.

AJT: And also working with Chase [Infiniti], who is phenomenal – that must have been a really fun experience.
BA: It was super fun, yeah. When we started, we were both similarly novice. It was like her third project and my fourth, or something like that, so it was nice to have someone to experience that scale with.

AJT: Did she shoot this before One Battle After Another?
BA: One Battle was already in the can and ready to come out. She had just started doing her first press stuff midway through the shoot.

“I love being involved in art that is pure entertainment while also having a message that’s resonant and valid.”

AJT: And in terms of your preparation for the role, was there anything Bruce told you to watch or read? Any mannerisms or influences that fed into it?
BA: In terms of the physical stuff, I was able to take my own reins there a little bit – the physicality, his sort of soldierly composure and things like that. But I felt the missing link for me was getting a whistle-stop tour of feminist ideas and literature. So I picked up a few books. I actually picked a few off the shelf of the woman whose apartment I was living in at the time, and they turned out to be really informative. There was Anne Frank’s diary – obviously a young girl trapped in an authoritarian structure – and there was this quite dense academic book on feminist frameworks. There was a line in there– I’m going to misquote this horribly, so apologies – but it was something like: “Sex roles are reciprocal. Men pay the price in their own minds for the way society treats women.” For Garth, I think that clicked everything into place. The notion of men losing out as a result of their own oppression of women suddenly made sense, and it provided a guiding light for the role from then on.

AJT: Like you mentioned before, it’s such a prevalent theme in today’s world. It’s a really interesting show to arrive right now. It must be cool watching the reactions online episode by episode.
BA: Super interesting. It’s scary as well. Like I said, the reach of this is pretty big, and it is somewhat intimidating because this is real stuff for a lot of people in the world. But it’s also a great gift. I love being involved in art that is pure entertainment while also having a message that’s resonant and valid. It’s a beautiful bonus to be involved in something like that.

AJT: In terms of your life and career, you started as a model before acting, right?
BA: Yes, I was at university in my early twenties and got scouted as a model. I kind of passively went on this multi-country adventure for a couple of years – bumming around, enjoying myself, meeting new people. I wasn’t making loads of money, but I was stringing things together and having a good time. Then Covid hit, and it became time to go back home, re-evaluate, and decide what I really wanted — which had always been to be an actor. That’s when it all started to come into fruition.

AJT: Are there any skills that translate across both?
BA: Yes and no. Just being comfortable and familiar with being in front of the camera is important. But actually, I think it was more a philosophical process of losing my vanity. As a model, you’re trying to find the angle that makes the clothes look really good. Emotions don’t work like that. Emotions are a bit ugly sometimes, but there’s beauty in them as well. Losing that mindset was important.

hair CHRISTOS BAIRABAS using BUMBLE and BUMBLE; make-up JOEY CHOY at THE WALL GROUP; photography assistants OWEN SMITH, FREYA MASELLI; fashion assistants CATHERINE LITTLE, TALIA ISSACHAROFF; production GRACE KO