Emmy-winning actress Ann Dowd initially recoiled at the role that propelled her to future success on television.
“When I first read the script, I said, ‘Oh great, a character that doesn’t speak. This is going to be fun,’” Dowd, 70, quipped on Obsessed: The Podcast.
Before starring as the menacing Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, Dowd became a household name through her role on another dystopian show: The Leftovers.
In the HBO drama, which ran from 2014 to 2017, Dowd plays the chain-smoking cult leader Patti Levin, who takes a vow of silence following a tragic global event in which two percent of the world’s population disappears.
“I wasn’t into it at first,” Dowd declared of her non-verbal character, Patti Levin. “I thought, ‘What are you going to do with that?’”
In The Leftovers, Dowd communicates to other characters primarily through writing. It was only after auditioning that the actress realized the value of the role’s primary restriction.
“As I finished the audition, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this could be something. I mean, this is powerful,’” she said.
“And then you realize over time that not speaking is an incredibly powerful place because people don’t know what to do,” she said emphatically. “They are looking to you for direction. And I really learned just how powerful staying silent is.”
Dowd, who appeared in episodes throughout all of the show’s three seasons—including after her character’s gruesome death—earned an Emmy nomination for Best Guest Actress for her role in the series. It would be the first of four in her acclaimed career, one of which she won for The Handmaid’s Tale.
“The more I did it, the more I loved it. It just made more and more sense,” she added. “And the way our beautiful, beautiful writer would just take us on journeys, and you just didn’t know where you were going, but you trusted every bit of it.”
Directly following the end of The Leftovers in 2017, Dowd played an even more fearsome character in The Handmaid’s Tale, the role that would cement her as a noteworthy TV actress. By this point, Dowd is used to playing the small screen’s darkest villains, but she doesn’t look at them that way.
“I never thought of her as a villain,” Dowd said of Aunt Lydia. “One of the rules about acting, the first one, is no judgment. So to me, she’s not a villain, she’s not doing horrible things, she’s not an evil person.”
Dowd jumped at the chance to reprise the character in the Emmy-winning show’s 2026 spinoff, The Testaments.
“I love her, and I respect her, and I feel deeply grateful for the chance to come to know her even more,” the actress said. “That’s honestly how I feel: couldn’t get there faster.”
The Testaments is currently streaming on Hulu. New episodes premiere every Wednesday.
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