I'm a little worried about Elisabeth Moss

The finest actress of our generation can't be okay, can she?

She’s harassed, harangued, bullied, stalked, decieved, manipulated, abused and attacked.

In one harrowing scene, she’s dragged around a kitchen by her hair, thrown against a table and held against a wall by her throat.

In another, she watches her sister’s throat get slit by a knife in restaurant packed with punters, all of whom think she did it.

The last film I saw in an actual cinema before Lockdown: Part I began back in March was a terrific, but terrifying, experience.

In The Invisible Man, Elisabeth Moss plays a woman being stalked by a controlling ex who’s invented an invisibility suit.

It’s a great film, but no one would call it a fun time at the flicks.

Because I like punishment, and I love Moss, I went twice.

Fast forward a few months, and one of the first films I saw post lockdown - before Part II began - was Shirley, in which Moss slowly loses her marbles while playing horror writer Shirley Jackson.

Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House back in 1959, the book that was turned into a Netflix horror series everyone raved about in 2018 and then promptly forgot.

In Shirley, Moss delivers another edgy, awkward, eerie and unhinged performance in a film that lands a surprise twist ending.

Again, another great film, but not one that I’d call a fun time.

Moss, of course, is gaining a reputation for this kind of thing.

Across three seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, she’s delivered scene after scene of handwringing feminine torture - ritualised rapes, children ripped from their mothers, physical and mental abuse - in a show in which grimness is absolute totality.

The scene that still stands out to me is that opening shot of season two, with Moss sitting in the back of a ute. She doesn’t say a word, but her face flicks through so many emotions during those two minutes that it’s like reading an entire book. Her eyes say everything.

I was lucky enough to visit the set of the show in Hamilton, Ontario, about an hour’s drive from Toronto, during season two.

In freezing conditions, with Moss dressed in her red Handmaid’s gown, fake snow billowing around us, and our hands plunged in coat pockets to keep warm - she wiped her nose with a tissue and told me how she sang Taylor Swift songs to cope with the shows oppressive themes.

But surely Shake It Off can only go so far. Work your way through Moss’ filmography and you’ll find her playing a gleeful zombie in Us, an unhinged rocker in Her Smell, a troubled cop in Top of the Lake, and a mobster in The Kitchen.

She was, of course, brilliant as Peggy Olsen in 88 episodes of Mad Men.

After all that, you’d think Moss deserves a break. All that crazy can’t be good for the soul. If she went and did a Matthew McConaughey and made back-to-back rom-coms for a while, no one would blame her. She’s been through the ringer. She’s done her time in the coal mines.

But she’s not. She’s signed a production deal with Hulu. She’s making two shows for them, which she’ll also star in: Black Match, a “psychosexual neo-noir thriller,” and Candy, in which she’ll play Texas killer Candy Montgomery. Yeeps.

I was going to end this by saying I hope Moss is using this pandemic to catch some downtime. Play some Scrabble with friends, cook up some slow cooked meats, sort out that bottom drawer in the kitchen. You know, normal stuff.

And then I found this recent interview with her. She looks happy! Relaxed! Normal! Maybe she’s just born to do what she does. Let’s hope she never stops.