The second season of Hulu's award winning drama The Handmaid's Tale will be bringing in a very intriguing character, and now we know who will fill the part. June/Offred's mother, Holly, who's only been briefly referred to during flashbacks until now, is coming to the new season on the drama, and she'll be played by 24 alum Cherry Jones.
Hulu announced the casting today, and revealed that Cherry Jones would be a guest star in The Handmaid's Tale Season 2, so right now we can't be sure how many episodes she'll appear in, though it has been confirmed that she'll show up in Episode 3. The character is described as being an outspoken feminist who was also a judgmental, but loving, mother to June. In the novel, Holly is an integral figure in Offred's life, with her frequently looking back on her mother's feminist causes and realizing more and more as things develop for her in the book, that her mother's ideals weren't as extreme as she once thought. Holly's fate in the book is left unclear to Offred, but she does appear in a training video that's shown to the Handmaid's, so it's assumed that she ended up in the colonies.
The recently released Season 2 trailer shows that the colonies will play a much larger part in the narrative, but we don't know if this means that Holly will be shown there in the present day, or if she'll only be seen in flashbacks.
Cherry Jones has made quite a name for herself during her career. The actress, who's done most of her work in theater, has been nominated for five Tony Awards and won the Best Actress award twice for her roles in the 1995 revival of The Heiress and the 2005 original production of Doubt. Jones also has racked up 50 credits in film and television work since the early 1980s. Along with playing President Allison Taylor in Seasons 7 and 8 of 24 from 2009 to 2010, Jones has made memorable appearances in The Horse Whisperer, Erin Brockovich, The Perfect Storm, Frasier, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood*, *The West Wing, Ocean's 12, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Mercy Street. Cherry Jones is no stranger to streaming shows, either, and was seen recently in Hulu's 11.22.63, as well as Transparent and Black Mirror.
You can catch Cherry Jones in Season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale when the show debuts on Hulu on Wednesday, April 25. To see what else you can watch in the coming months, be sure to check out our midseason premiere guide, and for more information on what you can watch on streaming services like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime, tune in to The Cord Cutter Podcast.
