‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 3 Finale Post-mortem Interview

SPOILER ALERT: WARNING — MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE SEASON 3 FINALE OF TELL ME LIES.

Talk about going out with a bang!

With the news last night that the Tell Me Lies Season 3 finale will be the last ever episode (sob), team TML did not hold back in how they chose to wrap things up. This finale, “Are You Happy Now That I’m on My Knees” has it all. Bree and Wrigley finally get it on, Lucy’s life implodes into teeny tiny pieces and she gets kicked out of college, Bree’s bio mom is an idiot in a horrifying scene involving that predatory perv Oliver, and Diana gets Yale back while falling even harder for Pippa. Then, to top it all off, Stephen ditches his clueless fiancée, ends Evan’s marriage and rips everyone to shreds in an epic wedding scene. And that’s all before Evan cuts the cake — with his face.

When Deadline spoke with Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer, Grace Van Patten and Jackson White, who play toxic lovers Lucy and Stephen, Van Patten said she’ll look back fondly on what she and White both call a “cupid show” (because so many of the actors are dating in real life, not least Van Patten and White themselves). She recalled, “The first season was really magic, and everyone was meeting each other and also many people were falling in love. It was just such a beautiful experience and instant chemistry between everybody.”

Her favorite, twistiest scene of all the seasons is, she said, “Stephen, walking down the steps with Diana. The coconut bra. That’s number one. She also said she “loved” when Lucy finally cracks and hits Stephen. Among White’s memorable moments? “This year she beat the sh-t out of me. That was fun,” and “I liked pretending like I was on drugs. And, anytime I get to sleuth around and be shady while she’s trying to love me, it’s very fun.”

Read on to find out what Oppenheimer, Van Patten and White think will happen in the future for Lucy and Stephen, Bree and Wrigley, Diana and Pippa and Evan. Plus, we get into why everybody —especially Stephen and Lucy — did what they did in the end.

DEADLINE: Grace and Jackson, you both get to go nuclear in this episode. Let’s start with Lucy. Grace, tell us about the scene where she busts in on Stephen’s Yale Law mixer and tries to get him kicked out. That was epic.

VAN PATTEN: What I really loved about the Yale vengeance thing was that it wasn’t selfish, it was for Diana. And it’s the first time that Lucy’s not taking action in a selfish way that benefits her. I mean, it does. Having Stephen crumble, I think, would make Lucy happy. But Lucy’s had the relief of getting the tape back at the end of Episode 7 and is feeling like maybe things are going to be OK, and she’s going to be OK. And then here’s Diana saying that she can’t go to Yale because Stephen’s going. And I think that really fires her up. And she sees how this guy just will never face any consequences and she can’t stop herself. And I liked that it was in defense of Diana and her doing something for her, even though it went completely wrong. Lucy does not know how to put anything into action correctly. But I liked that that was the intention behind it.

And then the rest of the episode is just heartbreaking for Lucy, and she is facing a lot of the consequences from her past actions. And she’s also in complete denial and doesn’t really know what’s going on and completely disassociating. So, you don’t really see her put together what’s actually happening.

DEADLINE: And Jackson, tell me about building up to that big wedding monologue and the direction you received and what you understood of where Stephen is at in this episode.

JACKSON WHITE: Yeah, he’s obviously been collecting secrets and to get to unload them, that was very, very fun. I think it’s the perfect explosion just of all the collecting he’s done. I had a lot of fun with it. It was a very, very fun speech. And very satisfying as an actor. I know it ruined the character’s lives, but I had fun.

DEADLINE: Meaghan, when Lucy gets kicked out of school, she essentially loses to Stephen and her life crumbles. Tell us about making that choice?

MEAGHAN OPPENHEIMER: There was always the idea that she had had some big public humiliating downfall because of Stephen, and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be that she got expelled or that it was something else at school. But then for quite a while now, I felt like, no, she needs to not graduate. And it also just made sense because you can’t continue her storyline at college while half the cast had graduated college.

DEADLINE: And let’s get into the wedding scene itself. I was honestly laughing out loud.

OPPENHEIMER: Me too. I was cackling. Me and my editor Gen [Gennady Fridman] and I, while we were editing the last 10 minutes, we were just like cackling every day. It felt like the saying, the best endings are unexpected, but inevitable. And that’s how that ending felt to me.

VAN PATTEN: It was very funny. It felt like it should be funny.

WHITE: It was funny. We shot that all night. We were shooting at three in the morning. That whole wedding was a week or two of night shoots, so we were delusional. There were stunts. Evan face plants into a cake. I had the flu. I was very sick while we were shooting that and I had to power through. It was trippy. It was a great experience, I thought.

DEADLINE: At the very end, after Stephen has dropped a million truth bombs at the wedding, Lucy decides to run off with him and then — shocker— he just leaves her at a gas station. Meaghan, tell us about that?

OPPENHEIMER: I mean, where do I even begin? There was always the question of there were three ways it could go. It could be they end up together, he rejects her, or she rejects him. It was going to be one of those three things. And I felt for quite a while that they shouldn’t end up together because that would be romanticizing what I believe is a really abusive relationship. I don’t see this as a Bonnie and Clyde. I don’t see this as a f–ked-up Romeo and Juliet. I see this as a story about emotional abuse and a lot of other things, but so I didn’t want them to end up together. And when I thought about her rejecting him, that’s the wishful thinking version. That’s the maybe more optimistic version. But in reality, Stephen is never going to let you go unless he’s the one to decide that, making the final decision. And so, I felt that the way to give Lucy actual true freedom was for him to be the one to leave it, even though it’s bittersweet and it’s chaotic and you want to wring her neck for making this decision. But in the end, it’s the one thing that sets her free.

DEADLINE: Grace and Jackson, what did you think of that ending?

WHITE: Superb.

VAN PATTEN: I loved it. I really, truly think it’s the perfect ending and it’s realistic. I love how Meghan didn’t try and make it a happy ending. It’s a very real ending to this story, but I do think there is a little hope in it, which I really appreciate as well. I’m so curious to hear people’s reactions because I do think it’s predictable, but it may be the last time that she needs to have the confirmation.

WHITE: It’s perfect. The point is that this is never-ending, which I love. I think it’s the correct message.

VAN PATTEN: Yeah. This will be a cycle unless you stop it.

WHITE: Not everyone gets to recognize that.

OPPENHEIMER: Also, the whole friend group needed to implode for them to ever actually have peace in their lives. This friend group is so poisoned. Most of them are not bad people, but within the dynamics of the group, they can never fully heal and grow. And so, it needed to be split apart, and it’s the cheesiest oldest saying, but the truth will set you free — for all of it to come out and it all to just release everyone.

DEADLINE: Meaghan, how did you settle on exactly how that final scene at the gas station went down?

OPPENHEIMER: Sometimes I’ll get an image of how I want a certain scene or moment to go, but the image is more symbolic of it. And I said to the writers’ room, I was like, “I just want it to be like, she gives him this one last shot, and she makes this choice to choose him over everyone else. And then it’s as if he just leaves her by the side of the road, but not actually that.” And they were like, “He could literally just leave her by the side of the road. It could be that simple.” And it seemed so dark but funny. And I always want to go back to the humor of the show. I think the show being self-aware and laughing at itself and laughing at the character’s mistakes is really important to keep it from being a tragedy.

DEADLINE: Let’s talk about where you think they all end up after we leave them?

OPPENHEIMER: I think that Pippa and Diana are happy and together, they’re in their late or mid-to-late twenties, so who knows if they end up together forever. But I think that they leave that wedding together and they’re in a happy relationship. I think that Bree and Wrigley are soulmates and they end up together. That smile at the end of the wedding where you see that — and I literally wrote it into the script, into the action lines — their eyes meet across the room. And despite all this carnage, you get the sense that these two are going to find a way to work it out, because now that everything’s exploded, they have nothing left to lose, and they don’t need to lie and hide anything.

I think Lucy probably never talks to any of these people again. I mean, she makes that decision, she chooses him in the wedding, but I think that’s what she needs because this group, they never forgave Lucy for a lot of things. I think in a lot of ways, they didn’t appreciate Lucy for being the tender, well-intentioned soul that she is. You see people in the show come down so hard on Lucy and understandably, but I think she leaves this friend group, and in that moment where she laughs and she realizes it all and she gets it, I think she’s going to go on from there and be fine. I think she’s going to be a little bit f–ked up from it for a minute. It’s a little bit shaken, but I think she gets a clean slate, which is what I felt really deeply that she needed from all of these people, including Bree. Maybe Brie, and Lucy become friends again 10 years from now when they’re in their thirties, but I think they need an actual break. And Stephen, I think he moves on and never looks back and got what he wanted and moves on to his next victim. And Evan, I think will be okay, but Evan needed this to blow up in his face. He did not deserve Bree.

DEADLINE: He didn’t. My sense of Evan is just that he’s a good person, just a little immature. He’s been spoiled, and he just needs to grow up a bit.

OPPENHEIMER: Totally. I think that even though he did all those really sh–ty things, his senior year of college, with Bree’s mom, all of that, I think he was trying to be a better person after that. But the relationship was still based on a lot of lies.

DEADLINE: Grace and Jackson, where do you think Stephen and Lucy end up?

VAN PATTEN: Hopefully far away from each other.

WHITE: Let’s hope so.

VAN PATTEN: Hopefully Lucy got the point finally. And hopefully it pushes her to focus on more important relationships and friendships and forces her to work on herself and figure out why she’s been so drawn to this person who hurts her so deeply. Hopefully she works on that. She’s probably thriving.

WHITE: And yeah, Stephen’s totally thriving. Well, until he’s not. Until it catches up.

VAN PATTEN: Until he gets bored.

WHITE: Everything comes around. So, I think it could be in a flash, or it could be a long downfall, but I like to believe that everything comes around for these types of people.

DEADLINE: I can imagine Stephen working in finance and going to jail for fraud. What would you feel about some point in the future if there was a reunion episode or even a film, because the fan following for this show is so huge?

VAN PATTEN: Look, if it makes sense. We all love working together so much. So, if there was an opportunity where it made sense, then I think, of course.

WHITE: I appreciate that everything is creatively appropriate and they’re protecting quality and if the story makes sense, then anything’s possible.

DEADLINE: Grace and Jackson, what do you think you’ve learned about each other and relationships and the acting process through making, Tell Me Lies?

WHITE: The characters or the plots haven’t taught me about my relationship but working with my girlfriend has. And that’s taught me a lot about respect and patience and learning how to really stay present. And I’ve been following Grace’s lead for years now and she’s taught me so much. It’s really true. I think even if we weren’t in a relationship, I’ve studied you like a hawk. I really have. I know how to behave.

VAN PATTEN: We’re still working on that. I’m kidding. No, I mean, I’ve learned so much coming back to the same character. It is something that I had never experienced before. It’s something that really excites me now. Just to have trust in myself and just working with Jackson and the rest of the cast to feel that safety when you’re working is so important. And to feel comfortable with people is so important. And that’s what I want to do forever. I just want to work with people I love. I think that’s the most important thing. And I just hope I get to continue to do that forever.