Ann Dowd talks rebelling against religion and why she’s scared The Handmaid’s Tale is coming true

Ann Dowd rebelled against her Catholic upbringing but the Emmy-winning actor has found it’s come in handy for The Handmaid’s Tale and Foxtel’s Lamb of God. But why does she feel the show’s fictional dystopian state has suddenly become a step closer to reality?

Ann Dowd has been drawing deeply on her Catholic upbringing of late and she says her eyes have been opened.

The American actor, best known for her Emmy-winning portrayal of the dementedly devout Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale and soon to appear as a “feral nun” in the Foxtel drama Lambs Of God, was born into a large Irish Catholic family as one of seven children and grew up steeped and educated in the faith.

Two of her aunts were nuns and her mother and some of her siblings are still devout.

There’s plenty she still likes about the church, not least the rituals, the sense of service and devotion and what it still means to her family — but she admits that she rebelled against the constraints of Catholicism at an early age, much to the consternation of her parents.

“I was a pain in the ass,” she says with a chuckle over the phone from her New York home.

“I wouldn’t want to raise me, I can tell you that right now. I’d say ‘what’s the matter with premarital sex, that’s ridiculous. If you don’t allow yourself to have sex with someone you’re in love with, you’re going to get married just to have sex and how bad a foundation is that?’. Let’s get real here — hormones, they are operating.”

Ann Dowd as Sister Margarita in Foxtel drama Lambs Of God.

“What I appreciate in the family I was raised in, is the love of God and the devotion to the teachings of Jesus were genuine and put into practice in the way they treated us and the world and people in our lives.

“What I pushed back against was the conservative nature of it, the rules and regulations, which from a very early age I said ‘no way — there’s no way God said this or Jesus said this’.”

It’s unsurprising then that Dowd has been drawn to roles with a spiritual element to them over the years.

She’s played a nun several times already, as well as cult-leader in the Melbourne-shot The Leftovers and even a Satanist opposite Toni Collette in last year’s horror hit Hereditary.

Dowd says she was fascinated when she was approached to play Sister Margarita in the four-part series Lambs Of God, which was shot last year in various locations around Australia including Tasmania and the Blue Mountains and airs next month.

Based on the novel of the same name by Australian author Marele Day, the drama is centred on three nuns, the last of a dying order on a remote island off the coast of England, whose simple life of prayer and devotion is up-ended when a priest arrives from the mainland with the news that the land is to be sold to developers and the nuns sent back to the world they had spent decades hiding from.

She admits that she — and her fellow nuns Essie Davis and rising UK star Jessica Barden — didn’t quite know what to make of the script even when they had all convened to start work, but says that extraordinary research of writer/producer Sarah Lambert in bringing to light female religious voices and stories that had been suppressed over centuries was very much part of the appeal.

Jessica Barden, Essie Davis, Anne Dowd and Sam Reid on the Blue Mountains set of the Foxtel drama Lambs Of God.

“When Sarah Lambert points you in the direction of the research she has done, you have all you can do to contain your rage at what happened to the women in the early church,” Dowd says.

“I can only read so much because it just paralysed me and I thought ‘how is this possible?’.”

While Sister Margarita is a kindly, motherly soul still tortured by a traumatic past, she says there are commonalities with Aunt Lydia, who continues to shock and appal with misguided acts of cruelty in the name of religion in the third season of the award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale, which is currently screening on SBS.

“I would say they are both trapped by something in their lives,” she says.

“I don’t know what it is with Lydia. I think Margarita’s devotion to God has no casualties and hurts no one. Lydia is devoted as well, as misguided as she is, but unfortunately there are many people left in her path who are wounded. So that’s the essential difference. I think they both believe they are devoted to God and what God has in mind for them.”

Audiences will get to know more of what drives Lydia in a few weeks, when episode 8 of season three delves deeper into the character’s backstory.

“I had all kinds of thoughts about her backstory but thank God there are writers because what they came up with was such a beautiful way in. It doesn’t tell the whole story — we don’t get to her early years, but I can imagine what they were — but I just thought it was so beautifully written.

“And those eight days of shooting were some of the finest, happiest hours of my life. Because I have known this woman now for three years and to have a chance to just follow that, I wept a fair number of times because of what could have happened to her if she wasn’t ruled by shame and humiliation.”

Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia in scene from Season 3 of The Handmaid's Tale.

Dowd is also angry at what’s happening with women’s rights in her homeland, with moves afoot in some southern states to outlaw abortion.

She told CNN recently that when she started filming the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of a Trump presidency seemed like a bad joke, but now she feels like the show’s fictional dystopian state of Gilead is a step closer to reality.

Now, she says, is the time to take action and raise voices.

“When I read what Georgia had in mind about the abortion laws, I am telling you honestly, I thought it was from the ‘60s. I didn’t realise what I read was from present times. I was so stunned that this could be real — and then the other states signing on — and that’s what I expressed.

“And then my brother said ‘Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian blah blah … it’s fiction, it will never happen’. And I am thinking ‘you’re not seeing what is in front of us here — these small, small steps’.

READ MORE:

LAMBS OF GOD IS FOXTEL’S NEXT BIG THING

AUSSIE HANDMAID’S TALE STAR’S MESSAGE TO FANS

HANDMAID’S TALE RETURNS IN CHILLING SEASON

“You know that line in Handmaid’s Tale which was ‘by the time we put our phones down it was too late’. That’s the same — pay attention, be aware. Don’t think someone else it going to take care of it for you because they are not.”

WATCH: Lambs Of God, Fox Showcase, from July 21.

WATCH: The Handmaid’s Tale, SBS, Thursday, 9.30pm and on demand.

Originally published as Ann Dowd talks rebelling against religion and why she’s scared The Handmaid’s Tale is coming true