Who knew watching two people cry could be so funny?
Elisabeth Moss sat down with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show Friday night to promote the new season of her dystopic drama The Handmaid’s Tale. Towards the end of her appearance, the late-night host brought up the many times the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress has cried on-screen, as detailed in a recent Vulture profile titled A Celebration of Elisabeth Moss’s Runny Mascara.
“[Crying on command] has come in handy as an actor, for sure. I guess I developed it? And I can’t always do it. But it’s a trick that I’ve learned and gotten good at,” she told Colbert.
This, naturally, prompted Colbert to ask Moss if she could cry right there, which in turn escalated into a cry-off between the two. The hilarious moment starts at around the 6: 00 mark in the video above.
Moss, who plays June in the series, also debuted a new clip from an upcoming episode of the show, where the handmaids go to Washington, D.C, or “Gilead on steroids,” as Moss called it.
Of shooting in the nation’s capital, Moss said that they shot scenes both inside and outside of the Lincoln Memorial, to the concern and amusement of onlookers. “Some people were just annoyed because we were in the way and they just wanted to go see this beautiful memorial,” she said. “They were just waiting for us to finish.”
Moss explained that “hundreds of people” also stood around and watched them shoot. “They were very cooperative. They would get quiet when we asked them to be quiet and then after certain takes where they liked it, they would applaud,” she explained.
“And then they stopped applauding at one point and I got disappointed,” she laughed, adding, “I guess that one wasn’t as good.”
Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale is now streaming on Hulu.
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