Dramatizing toxic relationships can be tricky, just ask the filmmakers and cast of ‘It Ends With Us’. Although the film about a woman who falls in love with a man who abuses her was a box office success, it sparked debate about whether it could also be a success. glorifies domestic violence.
The Hulu series “Tell Me Lies,” now streaming its second season, centers on an on-off relationship between Lucy and Stephen (Grace Van Patten and Jackson White). Their relationship is not physically violent, but it is unhealthy.
Meaghan Oppenheimer, executive producer and showrunner, says she is very conscious of respecting the influence of early relationships on a person’s life. She says that at that age “you learn how to love and what love is.”
“This age is so important, and I think most people, when they write about YA, don’t take it seriously,” Oppenheimer said. “There’s a kind of lighthearted aspect to some of it.”
In ‘Tell Me Lies’ she also wanted to address the way people sometimes romanticize unhealthy relationships with the justification that the harder they are to maintain, the stronger the connection.
“As you mature, hopefully you realize that happiness is the most exciting thing. The back and forth relationships, the on and off, are actually very boring because they follow the same cycle, and there’s never any actual growth,” she said.
We all know someone like Lucy, have been Lucy, or even Stephen, says Oppenheimer.
“We’ve all had that friend, and many of us have been that friend. It’s wild what we do to ourselves in the pursuit of love and sex. We accept behavior and treatment that we would not accept in any other part of our lives, and we can be the most hurtful.”
Van Patten says she can “completely identify” with Lucy’s clouded judgment when it comes to Stephen.
“I definitely deal with being very young and not knowing who I am and seizing and pretending I knew who I was and losing myself in certain situations that I thought were priorities at the time.”
This season, Lucy and Stephen spend a lot of energy trying to make the other miserable. Van Patten and White are dating in real life, and Van Patten says the transition to their on-screen characters has been “a lot of fun.”
“(Lucy’s) anger is still a need to connect with him. It’s a way to still have Stephen in her life without being with him. I found it really interesting to perform in those situations with (White) because there’s so much more to it than what we had to say. It was almost more how we looked at each other and what we said in our heads, as opposed to the lines being written.
Van Patten says they would apologize after a particularly vicious attack.
“For a scene we would say, ‘Are people doing this? This is crazy.’ And then we both have to get into it, justify our actions and do it. And then it’s like, ‘My God. I’m so sorry I just had to do that to you. ”
White says he and Van Patten “could switch when necessary,” but they don’t share as many scenes in season two.
The new season introduces a new unhealthy relationship: Lucy’s boyfriend Bree (Catherine Missal) and the husband of a professor, played by Tom Ellis (“Lucifer”). Ellis is married to Oppenheimer.
“Someone pitched Tom’s idea, and I thought, ‘That’s crazy.’ Then I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I just asked him,” Oppenheimer said. “He was a little nervous, but very excited. It’s a darker area than he’s played in before. I think it felt really heavy for him towards the end. It was difficult for him to play a character he couldn’t really forgive. I had to keep saying, ‘Be colder. Don’t laugh so much. ”
Ellis says the role took its toll, but the couple’s daughter, Dolly, helped pull him out of it.
“For me there was no fame at all. I actually felt quite dark at the end,” he said. “I was very grateful to Dolly, who was kind of an immediate release from the story we were telling.”
When it comes to the characters, it’s harder to write Lucy than Stephen, Oppenheimer said.
“Stephen is obviously very complicated, but he moves in a straight line. He is completely focused on what he wants and everything he does serves a purpose to achieve that. Lucy doesn’t know what she wants.”
Lucy “doesn’t have the same tools as Stephen. It’s harder to write a character who does things, and you don’t know why they’re doing it, because she doesn’t know why she’s doing it.”
It would be “great” to see Lucy “come full circle,” but not yet. “I think she still has a long way to go, but it would be great to see her do well,” Oppenheimer said.
Moreover, Oppenheimer likes to write about the messiness in relationships.
“So much progress has been made as humanity, but we haven’t figured out how to stop breaking each other’s hearts. When you read a love story from 100 years ago, the feelings are all the same. I think there’s something strange about that.”
Oppenheimer is writing “Second Wife,” a more uplifting show for Ellis, in which he will star opposite Emma Roberts, who executive produced “Tell Me Lies.”
Roberts will play the second wife of a Briton who lives in London. Oppenheimer says the show is “funnier” than “Tell Me Lies” “with more heart.”
“I think people will assume it’s autobiographical. It’s really no different than the fact that I’m an American girl married to a Brit, and I’m his second wife. I know people will think that… So, get that out there.”
