After <em>The Testaments</em> Season 1 Finale, Lucy Halliday Is Ready to Build an Army

Spoilers below.

Never underestimate a teenage girl when her friends are in peril. By the end of The Testaments’s season 1 finale, undercover Mayday operative Daisy (Lucy Halliday) has faced off against the two most formidable figures on both sides of The Handmaid’s Tale universe: June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) and Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd). On top of that, Daisy shares a bombshell with new best friend Agnes (Chase Infiniti): June is Agnes’s birth mother, and she isn’t the notorious monster that Gilead paints her to be.

“For Daisy, it’s not a slip of the tongue moment,” Halliday tells ELLE. “It’s a very carefully articulated, intentional statement that she’s giving. She’s purposely telling Agnes her lineage, but in a way that’s not malicious. She’s trying to give this piece of information that Daisy knows is powerful, that will transform Agnes’s life.”

Offscreen, Halliday knows a little something about a life-changing experience tied to Gilead; The Testaments is Halliday’s first TV credit, as well as her first leading role in a series. The whirlwind was in full swing in April when Halliday jumped on Zoom from Los Angeles to talk to ELLE about starring in the highly anticipated adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, and the 22-year-old is taking it in her stride. The same week The Testaments premiered across the globe on Hulu and Disney+, James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’ (which Halliday stars in), hit U.K. theaters and will be released in the U.S. in October.

It has been an auspicious career jump-start for the commanding performer from Paisley, Scotland (which is just outside Glasgow), whose on-screen debut in Georgia Oakley’s excellent Blue Jean earned Halliday a Scottish BAFTA for Best Actress in 2023. While The Testaments is set in a dystopian future and Blue Jean takes place in late-’80s England, themes of oppression run through both titles. “I think there’s probably a subconscious desire to be telling these stories,” Halliday says. “Especially as a teenage girl growing up, I was continually looking for any form of representation or validation in a film or TV program that captured the experience of adolescence or how I felt.”

In Blue Jean, Halliday plays a closeted teen at a time when the U.K. government introduced legislation (known as Section 28) banning any “promotion” of LGBTQ+ topics in the classroom. As Daisy in The Testaments, Halliday depicts a headstrong young woman from Toronto who joins the Mayday resistance after suspected Gilead forces murder her adopted parents. The Gilead she inhabits is a patriarchal authoritarian one in which women’s activities are tightly controlled, their lives predestined for roles as Wives or Aunts, or, perhaps, Handmaids, who are forced to bear children amid a societal fertility crisis.

The seventh episode of The Testaments, “Commitment,” revealed how Daisy infiltrated Gilead through the Pearl Girl missionary program, which finds recruits among Toronto’s “troubled” youth, promising a better life in Gilead if they are willing to leave everything they know behind. Having fallen in love with Atwood’s The Testaments when it came out in 2019, Halliday says she “desperately wanted them to hire me” for the role of Daisy. Although The Testaments is ultimately a story of adolescent hope, as the season progresses, the material itself becomes darker, its parallels to real-world restrictions on reproductive rights and health care all the more unsettling. “I think it’s something that we’re all acutely aware of,” Halliday says. “But I think what is particularly harrowing is that The Testaments and The Handmaid’s Tale were never intended to be documentaries of reality.”

Halliday in The Testaments.

Thankfully, the atmosphere on The Testaments set was a far cry from the eerie foreboding of Gilead itself. “The ability to do those intense scenes and give them our all came from having those girls and the crew we had around us,” Halliday says. “To be able to transition out of those heavy scenes into levity and support.” Real friendships blossomed between Halliday, Infiniti, Mattea Conforti, and Rowan Blanchard (whose characters were raised in Gilead), through weekly dinners—including one to Medieval Times—and trips to the movies. “Having that girl group that felt like you’re back in school was really lovely,” Halliday says. Halliday speaks particularly fondly about working with Infiniti, sharing that the One Battle After Another actress’s influence has already had an impact on Halliday’s work. “Primarily, she taught me a lot about the importance of advocating for yourself and sticking up for yourself on a set,” Halliday says. “That was something she was constantly trying to get me to do more of.” Halliday noticed a transformation even before the end of shooting the first season of The Testaments. “Now there is a greater ease on sets when it comes to speaking up for what I need or advocating [for myself],” she says. “And that stems from working with Chase.”

Initially, Daisy’s opinion of the young women (known as “Plums”) she is meant to befriend at the Aunt Lydia School is not a flattering one; she thinks they are stupid and sheltered. But as she spends more time among them, she learns that her new peers have crushes, dreams, and strong minds similar to those of her classmates back in Toronto. “She realizes these girls are a lot more nuanced and brilliant than she ever first gave them credit for,” Halliday says. Daisy quickly finds herself caring about their fates.

In the penultimate episode of season 1, Daisy at last becomes a member of their ranks, graduating from her status as a Pearl Girl to a Plum when she reveals she got her first period. (Halliday was sad to part with her Pearl Girl attire—an outfit of pure white—but was grateful to be done fretting over stains. “It was a point of stress, because every day if I had a snack, everyone would be eating very freely, and I was having to be very careful,” she says. “I didn’t spill one thing on it for the entire duration of filming, which I was very proud of myself.”)

Now that she’s officially a Plum, Daisy’s position is all the more complicated when Moss’s June returns in the finale episode, titled “Secateurs,” to pull Daisy out of her mission. “I know there had been talks of Elisabeth coming back for episode 10, but nothing’s ever [set] until it’s on the page,” Halliday says. “Nothing’s ever solid. I was so ecstatic when I read it and saw that she was definitely going to be back, and we were going to get to spar again.”

Moss and Halliday in The Testaments.

Moss in The Testaments.

Despite June’s protests, Daisy proves to be as stubborn as the face of the Gilead resistance herself. During the highly charged confrontation in the dead of night, a defiant Daisy tells June whom she is fighting to save. At the top of that list is Becka (Conforti), who will likely be executed after she killed her sexual predator father, Dr. Grove (Randal Edwards), in episode 9. Daisy insists Becka is not collateral damage, but a person who longs for more, and Daisy will stop at nothing to save her. Guilt is a contributing factor to her decision to remain among the Plums, as Daisy herself exposed Dr. Grove’s crimes. “The power of Daisy and her downfall are the same thing,” Halliday says. “She does have this fire and determination, but she can sometimes be blinded by it. She’s so determined to reach a goal that sometimes she can be a little bit too focused on it and not always aware [of other aspects], which is a bit of a detriment to her.”

Ultimately, Daisy rejects June’s assessment that you “cannot put the people who are fighting at risk just because you think one person is special.” Daisy refuses to back down. Why? “She knows she can’t leave, because that’s not the right choice,” Halliday explains. “She needs to do whatever she can to protect her friends and peers, because that’s the most powerful thing she can do.”

The exchange between Daisy and June was “a great gift of a scene” that Halliday couldn’t wait to film, noting that she didn’t take the time working opposite Moss for granted. “I asked her an abundance of questions, and then I just watched her a lot from a distance,” Halliday says. “I was watching her all the time, because I was in awe of how she holds herself on a set and how well-informed she is [about this world].” Knowledge and support are not all Moss offered to Halliday and Infiniti. “I think, greater than all of that, she gave us the power of her reassurance,” Halliday says. “We are aware we’re stepping into this machine that has been prolific and huge, and we don’t want to mess that up. We feel that responsibility, and to have Elisabeth give the thumbs up, to be like ‘You’ve got this.’ To give us space to build these characters for ourselves, to pass the mantle in the way that she did was so lovely.”

On-screen, June is less inclined to let the next generation lead, and what takes place between her and Daisy in the finale resembles a mother-daughter spat. Both push back against the other: Daisy’s arrogance of youth versus June’s experience. June resorts to calling Daisy “young lady” after Daisy presumes to know what June has been through. While the duo might indeed give off a familial vibe, The Testaments creator Bruce Miller has already confirmed the series has made a major change from Atwood’s novel: Daisy is not June’s youngest daughter, Holly (or Baby Nichole, as she is known in the book). Still, the Daisy of The Testaments nevertheless possesses June’s fire and fight. And at least one real family connection is made when Daisy mentions Agnes, unaware that she is June’s daughter. Daisy quickly catches on that Agnes is who June was forced to leave behind, and June can’t contain her tears when Daisy describes what Agnes is like as a young adult—and that there is a chance she could be happy. But this won’t come to pass if Gilead’s rule persists, and Daisy must continue her mission to topple it from the inside. “I can do this,” Daisy says. “You know I can. Fuck it, you knew it even before I did.” Daisy’s fearlessness finally earns her a one-way ticket back to her undercover role, and she returns with this secret about Agnes’s birth mother.

Infiniti and Halliday at the premiere of The Testaments.

After Daisy’s late-night excursion to meet June, she cannot sneak back into her bed because her absence has been noticed. Instead, she is “caught” smoking by her handler and Becka’s soon-to-be husband, Commander Garth Chapin (Brad Alexander). She is thus sent to Aunt Lydia, who reprimands Daisy for the infraction. Daisy cites her concern for Becka’s fate as the reason for her misbehaving and pushes Aunt Lydia to do something to save her friend from execution. “It’s the first time I think Daisy’s like, ‘needs must,’ and takes that opportunity,” Halliday says. “She does it delicately, but still gets her point across. It was a great scene to showcase that Daisy has developed a strength [to where] she now even feels comfortable going head-to-head with Aunt Lydia.” Without mentioning June by name, Daisy refers to a mother who will do anything to save her daughter, planting a seed in Aunt Lydia’s head. “I think Aunt Lydia recognizes the strength, intellect, and care that Daisy has for those around her,” Halliday adds. Ultimately, a lie saves Becka’s life, as Becka’s mother confesses to killing her husband, and she is executed instead.

In the aftermath of these roller-coaster events, Daisy finally tells Agnes the identity of her birth mother. “You’re exactly like her,” Daisy tells Agnes. While Gilead teens lack agency, Daisy wants to equip them with something she has in abundance: “Knowledge is power, and Daisy has all this information from the outside world that the girls don’t have,” Halliday says. But Agnes is far from thrilled by this revelation of her birth mother’s identity. “From both sides, there’s such specific emotions taking place that we really were trying to nail it,” Halliday says. Getting that balance right made it one of the trickiest scenes Halliday shot all season.

At first, Agnes does not believe her friend. Daisy tells Agnes she thinks her real name is Hannah, and Agnes softens when she hears it. (She has a drawing with the name “Hannah” on it, hidden at home.) “I think Daisy is continually trying to find moments to plant seeds of information,” Halliday says. “She does it with Shunammite (Blanchard), with the sex talk [in episode 8], and now she’s doing it with Agnes and her lineage. Daisy knows that if these girls knew what was going on, they would be able to change their own lives.”

Infiniti and Halliday in The Testaments.

But one character still lacking answers is Daisy herself. Gilead escapee and Handmaid’s Tale alum Rita (Amanda Brugel) told Daisy that her parents got her out of Gilead but have since died. Does Halliday have any theories or answers as to their identity? “That’s definitely a question for [creator] Bruce Miller,” Halliday says. “That’s definitely an aspect that we’ve all thought about, but I don’t have any answer.” Ditto, the question of what will happen in the second season, which hadn’t been officially renewed when we spoke, but has since earned the greenlight. The Testaments might be Halliday’s first TV gig, but she is already an expert at not giving away any spoilers.

Still, Daisy is very clear about what she intends to do in a note to June in the final moments of the season 1 finale. “I’m going to destroy Gilead with what it values most,” Daisy says. “I’m staying in the fight, and I’m gonna create my own army. Because nothing can be more powerful than a teenage girl.” After we’ve seen what Daisy is capable of opposite June and Aunt Lydia, Gilead should be worried.