Massachusetts-set ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ cleans up at 2018 Emmy nominations

As expected, “The Handmaid’s Tale” was a major player at the 2018 Emmy Award nominations Thursday morning. The Hulu series, which is set in a dystopian Massachusetts, earned 20 nominations, including a repeat nomination for the winner of last year’s Supporting Actress in a Drama Series award, Holyoke native Ann Dowd. The series’ 20 nods were the fourth-most for any show, finishing only behind “Game of Thrones” (22), “Saturday Night Live” (21), and “Westworld” (21).Besides the repeat nomination for Dowd, “The Handmaid’s Tale” scored nods for Drama Series, Actress in a Drama Series (Elisabeth Moss), Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Joseph Fiennes), and two additional nominations for Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Alexis Bledel and Yvonne Strahovski). One show that stars a pair of local natives and has been nominated in the past was shut out in every major category. Medfield’s Uzo Aduba has been nominated for Supporting Actress for “Orange Is the New Black” three times (winning twice, in 2014 and 2015), while Wayland and West Roxbury’s Taylor Schilling was nominated for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2014.  While the show didn’t retain its former awards nomination glory this year, streaming giant Netflix, which distributes “Orange Is the New Black,” earned the most nominations of any channel or platform with 112, narrowly beating HBO’s 108.