casting couch

Orange Is the New Black’s Samira Wiley Trades One Kind of Women’s Prison for Another, Joins The Handmaid’s Tale

Samira Wiley. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images

Samira Wiley, who rose to fame and into a most special place in our hearts as Poussey Washington on Orange Is the New Black, has signed on for her first series regular role since leaving Litchfield. And it looks like she’ll be trading one women’s prison for another, co-starring with Elisabeth Moss in Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the book by Margaret Atwood. Moss will play Offred, a young woman who belongs to a caste of “handmaids” who are essentially sex slaves kept on hand to help repopulate the world (think the Many Wives of Mad Max: Fury Road), and Wiley will play Offred’s best friend. Both women are handmaids-in-training and trying to survive a totalitarian society ruled by religious fundamentalists. Atwood is on board as a “consulting producer” for the series, which will be written in part by Bruce Miller, who worked on The 100. You have until 2017 to emotionally prepare yourself to watch Wiley once again be imprisoned by a broken system.

Samira Wiley Cast in Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale