Hulu‘s hit drama Tell Me Lies is back with its highly-anticipated third season, and the supersized premiere ended with one of the series’ most stunning intercourse scenes but.
After Stephen (Jackson White) blackmailed Lucy (Grace Van Patten) into recording a damning confession on digicam, her previous transgressions, the emotional toll of Stephen’s abuse and the stress of not understanding what he’d do with the tape led her again at Alex’s (Costa D’Angelo) door.
Earlier within the episode, Lucy had reduce her evening with Alex brief after he advised her he couldn’t give her the reassurance she wanted. But in her newly horrible headspace, she returned on a mission. During a tough, specific end-of-episode intercourse scene, Lucy replayed the torturous tape in her thoughts and requested Alex to speak all the way down to her whereas that they had intercourse. As she laid facedown on his mattress, Alex advised her she was “fucking pathetic” and “nothing.”
Fans who’ve been right here for the reason that starting know that portraying poisonous bodily and emotional relationships is nothing new for Tell Me Lies, however the intense ranges of psychological misery and darkness explored in Season 3 are particularly robust to look at. As viewers soak up Alex and Lucy’s layered intercourse scenes this season, they could marvel why Lucy isn’t solely accepting, however actively in search of out, this remedy. Why is Alex embracing the position of aggressor? And what goes into filming and bringing scenes like these to display? Decider acquired the solutions straight from creator/showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer and stars Van Patten and D’Angelo.
“I think Lucy is searching for punishment,” Van Patten advised Decider over Zoom. “I think she is so used to being treated like that authentically from Stephen, and she accepts the love she thinks she deserves. She’s looking for that. She’s trying to craft that out of this new relationship with Alex, and it’s really heartbreaking.”
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“Alex is sort of a safe space for her to explore those darker impulses,” Oppenheimer added. “And he, on the flip side, is dealing with his own trauma. That’s why he’s sort of drawn to this role of aggressor, because he was in the other role. He was in the victim role earlier on in life.”
For D’Angelo, who joined the solid this season as a drug seller at Baird who grew up in a nasty foster dwelling alongside Bree (Cat Missal), diving deeper into Alex’s backstory was important to getting inside his character’s head.
“A lot of it was the work before we shot, in researching the foster homes and what these kids would have went through as children. For me, it was so important to know,” D’Angelo advised Decider. “Then you get to set, you have to just let it go and trust that it’s there; that you’ve done the work. Especially for those big scenes, you have to listen to each other.”
“We really wanted it to feel like two people who are genuinely exploring their fucked up shit with each other through their bodies, and not try to make it more provocative for the sake of being.”
Meaghan Oppenheimer, Tell Me Lies
In Season 3, Episode 1, Lucy advised Stephen she as soon as felt disgrace after she put her ex’s hand on her throat mid-argument as a result of she wished him to be extra aggressive. “I disgusted him,” she advised Stephen. “And sometimes I think about that moment and feel like maybe there’s something disgusting about me.” When Lucy positioned Alex’s hand on her throat in Episode 3 and he adopted her lead reasonably than give her that very same look, she felt protected to discover these impulses even additional. Though there’s a stage of consolation between the characters, the scenes are undoubtedly robust to look at, even for Oppenheimer.
“Watching them, it was a hard day on set for sure. It went very well and smoothly, because our director, Ed Lilly, was amazing and understood the scene. But it’s just a hard scene to watch over and over again,” Oppenheimer recalled. “We were all very aware of wanting them to feel safe. I had a lot of conversations with Grace and Costa, but especially Grace, beforehand about wanting it to not feel like we were trying to make it kinky and like we were trying to make it sexy. We really wanted it to feel like two people who are genuinely exploring their fucked up shit with each other through their bodies, and not try to make it more provocative for the sake of being. Coming from an emotional place is really important, and keeping the camera pretty tight. We didn’t need to show too much all the time.”
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While Alex and Lucy’s first intercourse scene was actually essentially the most stunning, Episode 4 featured one other emotionally-charged hookup between them in a automotive. While getting drinks with Alex, Lucy noticed her ex, Max (Edmund Donovan), throughout the room and recalled how horribly she’d handled him. Alex inspired her to interrupt Max’s date and apologize, so she took his recommendation, advised Max she was sorry, then adopted Alex out to the car parking zone the place the 2 acquired intimate within the again seat of his automotive. At one level, Lucy misplaced her grip and mentioned, “Oh shit, sorry.” In response, Alex urged her to say the phrases once more, and identical to that, an emotional Lucy repeatedly apologized throughout intercourse, as if she felt she must additional atone for her sins.
“I think you see how much Lucy is in pain and how much she is really disliking herself and her actions during that time,” Van Patten advised Decider of her character’s quest for punishment this season.
“It is so dark,” D’Angelo mentioned of his Alex and Lucy’s unconventional relationship. “But the writing is so great that you just let it come out and it’s brilliant. Working with Grace, she makes my life so easy. She will be breaking down and having this terrible moment, and opening up, and she could just snap out of it like that and is smiling and great. It’s such a good energy to have. You want to keep that up, because you’re shooting for so long, and it’s exhausting.”
Just as Tell Me Lies stars Cat Missal and Tom Ellis did throughout their Season 2 interview with Decider, D’Angelo additionally praised Oppenheimer and the present’s intimacy coordinator for serving to making inherently uncomfortable scenes simpler to movie.
“The intimacy coordinator, and Grace, and I all worked super close with Meaghan as well. And she’s got such a clear vision of what she wants and where the characters are. All these sex scenes are just the characters expressing themselves physically where they’re at mentally, their trauma, and how they how with it. And as young people, they’re dealing with it through sex,” D’Angelo mentioned. “It was great. It was scary. And it was exciting. It’s all those things that you want. And I think it really came through in the show.”
New episodes of Tell Me Lies Season 3 premiere Tuesdays on Hulu.
