While some TV writers love focusing on their heroes, the opposite was true for “The Handmaid’s Tale” co-showrunner Yahlin Chang. For her, the fun was in writing the villains, who she felt had more humanity than the ones we see in real life.
Speaking on the Women Redefining the Future of TV panel, presented by Google TV at TheWrap’s 2025 Power Women Summit, presented by STARZ #TakeTheLead on Tuesday — alongside Shondaland creative partner Betsy Beers, “Nobody Wants This” star Justine Lupe, Google TV’s global head of go-to-market and content programming Lisa Siskind Bilgrei, and Sara Rea, the founder and CEO of Firefly Studios and former head of unscripted at Hello Sunshine — Chang explained that she always relished writing the commanders and those in charge of the fictional Gilead.
“I mean, actually, I have to say that our sort of villains on our show have more humanity and more complexity than the actual — it’s like, you couldn’t script what’s going on now,” she told moderator Raquel Calhoun. “Because you’d be like, ‘That’s so on the nose. That’s so ridiculous.’”
Yahlin Chang, Co-Showrunner, Executive Producer & Writer for "The Handmaid’s Tale" shares her interest in writing “people of ill will” in Gilead, unaware that it would reflect the political climate of today’s leaders.
— TheWrap (@TheWrap) December 2, 2025
“What’s bizarre is we would write these things and then they… pic.twitter.com/uyTeGbM0xu
What Chang found “bizarre” was that she and her team would write the story for “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and then much of it would come to pass in real life.
“It’s always astonishing to me that as a woman, I have fewer rights now than I did when I started the goddamn show, you know?” she marveled. “So people always say, ‘Oh, wow. How did you have this — you made such a cautionary tale.’ And I always feel like saying, ‘Well, we obviously failed. We didn’t caution enough people.’”
“It was never meant to be like a prescription, you know?” Chang continued. “So it was always like, eerily true.”
Ironically, Chang noted, the challenge of a TV writer is always to make a fictional world seem real. So, as women continued to face challenges to their rights, the reality almost got too real for the series’ team.
“You started to realize that, oh, there is no end to how much people want to strip rights away from women, or how much people want to marginalize other people, or be cruel in order to enhance their own power,” she said.
For her part, Lupe noted that starring in a comedy like “Nobody Wants This” in a time that is so “completely politically, singularly dark” to be a balm.
“It’s a joy to know that I’m bringing people joy in a time that’s like, incredibly anxiety inducing and it’s been a nice place to go in between the chaos of what’s happening in my real life, and to our real country,” she said. “But it’s also nice to lean into like the goodness of humanity, and good stories with good people who are putting their best foot forward, and remembering that that is a real thing.”
Meanwhile, genres outside of the usual comedy and drama are facing funding struggles in today’s TV climate. Reality TV in particular has seen a contraction, and according to Rea, it means shows need one element in particular to be successful.
“It really just means, just like anything, it has to be undeniable,” she explained. “And I’m so tired of that word, but it’s the reality that it is.”
“There’s always also these weird outliers,” Bilgrei added on. “So we talk this way, and then something comes out of the blue, and you’re like, nobody thought that was gonna happen.”
Beers largely agreed, noting early on that successful television is always being redefined.
“I think every time a big brain comes up with something that you want to watch, it’s being redefined,” she said. “I mean, we, in theory, redefine certain genres. And we didn’t think we were redefining anything. We were just telling stories that you wanted to see.”
TheWrap’s Power Women Summit presented by STARZ #TakeTheLead is the essential gathering of the most influential women across entertainment and media. The event aims to inspire and empower women across the landscape of their professional careers and personal lives. PWS provides one day of keynotes, panels, workshops and networking. For more information visit: thewrap.com/pws. For all Power Women Summit 2025 coverage, click here.
