affordable home cleanings at home. >> i tip. >> thee well. >> cbs news. >> i first interviewed margaret atwoodlassic dystopian novel the handmaid's tale on may 1st, 2022. that was exactly one day before a draft of the supreme court's decision to overturn roe v wade was leaked. atwood's book famously takes place in a near-future totalitarian, theocratic military dictatorship known as gilead, which has overthrown the u.s. government. the new regime reorganizes society using an extreme interpretation of the old testament. women are the lowest ranking class prevented from owning property, reading, writing and, of course, deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. environmental catastrophes have rendered much of the population infertile, so the government has reintroduced forced surrogacy. forced surrogacy, like the handmaids in the book of genesis in the bible. one of the most striking things about atwood and her book, which we discussed that day, is that every brutal and terrifying aspect of the fictional gilead was inspired by things that had already happened. the book was first

i mean, it's what margaret atwood foretold. tell me what it was like to play that when you thought maybe hillary was going to win. and then when she didn't. and all of that progress was was rolled back and is now being rolled back. a lot of it. >> um, it's hard. it's it's invigorating to work on those things. um, it's interesting, though, because we went through an entire cycle in the six years that we made that show. we we had the moment of protest, and then we came back out and we thought, wow, we something was achieved here. these voices were heard. we saw those red outfits, those crimson clothes appear outside of congress, and we were making an effect. and then the show was just wrapped. and we're in a different world again. and i think one of the pieces of solace that we can take in this moment is that time is long. you hit a certain age, i think, where you look at, you look at the cycles and things will change. there is hope. the arc of this is going to be long. this is a problem that another generation is going to have t