Mabel Li on Playing Aunt Vidala in The Testaments: Building a Complex Character
Australian actress Mabel Li discusses her role as Aunt Vidala in The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. Li, a 28-year-old NIDA graduate previously nominated for a Logie, was cast after auditioning for the character and impressing producers with her personal approach to the role. The interview explores how she developed the character by reading Margaret Atwood's source material and discovering Vidala's backstory through flashback scenes.
Mabel Li, an Australian actress known for her role in the SBS drama New Gold Mountain, has taken on the character of Aunt Vidala in The Testaments, marking her first major international television production. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Li describes how she was cast after her American managers sent her an embargoed audition for the role, initially codename "Sister Vera." She explains that producers, particularly executive producer Mike Barker, were drawn to what she describes as a "personal" quality in her audition tape that made the regime feel deeply personal rather than distant. Li prepared for the role by reading both The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments twice, taking detailed notes, and then allowing herself to discover the character through the scripts and filming process. She notes that a flashback episode set in pre-Gilead times was particularly helpful in informing her portrayal and understanding Vidala's dynamic with Aunt Lydia, and that discussions with director Mike Barker about a traumatic event in the character's past shaped her performance throughout the series.
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- Sydney Morning HeraldCenter
‘It’s a gun, and it’s five centimetres from my face’: Mabel Li on the terror and pleasure of The Testaments
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