These IRL 'Handmaids' are creeping people out
Keep South By weird.
On Friday and Saturday -- the first two days of the Austin tech and entertainment festival -- attendees spotted women dressed as Handmaids and almost entirely naked men and women walking around in the rain.
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The Handmaids were there to promote Hulu's upcoming dystopian show The Handmaid's Tale and the naked models were there promoting cable network Bravo's upcoming show Stripped.
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Marketing at its finest.
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While unique activations and promotion for shows and movies are common at SXSW, the dressed up (or not dressed up) people on the streets stood out to passersby.
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Hulu's 10-episode series, based on the best-selling book, follows people in a dystopia called Gilead — a totalitarian society, once part of the U.S., rooted in twisted religious fundamentalism. It's a place where a class of women are subjugated and used only for reproduction.
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Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) stars as one of the world's few remaining fertile women, Offred. Orange is the New Black star Samira Wiley plays Moira, Offred's best friend from college and fellow handmaid-in-training, and Alexis Bledel plays Ofglen, an ally to Offred.
Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Max Minghella, Madeline Brewer, Ann Dowd and O-T Fagbenle also co-star.
The series debuts on April 26. Hulu is co-hosting a Handmaid's Tale party with Twitter at SXSW.
Meanwhile, Stripped is set to debut this summer.
Other activations at South By include: a giant buffalo to promote American Gods, a Resistance Radio station for Amazon's The Man in the High Castle, a Twin Peaks themed restaurant called Double R Diner and a Better Call Saul pop-up of Los Pollos Hermanos.
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Saba was a Los Angeles-based reporter who covers all things digital entertainment, including YouTube, streaming services and digital influencers. Prior to that, she spent two years at the Los Angeles Times covering entertainment for the Calendar and Company Town sections. Saba grew up in Santa Monica and graduated from Boston University with a B.S. in journalism and B.A. in political science. When not reporting, she is usually binge watching shows online or looking for new coffee shops to frequent.
