‘Tell Me Lies’ Stars Break Down Season 3’s New Level of Toxicity, the Last Straw That Makes Stephen ‘Burn Everything Down’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Tell Me Lies” Season 3, Episodes 1-3.

After the “Tell Me Lies” Season 2 finale saw Grace Van Patten’s Lucy and Jackson White’s Stephen make what both audiences as well as their friends knew was a mistake by getting back together, it took only a number of weeks and one secret to break them apart yet again.

“To the audience all these people are so predictable, and I’m sure when the audience sees Lucy and Stephen back together, they know that they’re going to end relatively quickly. But the characters don’t know that, or at least Lucy doesn’t know that,” Grace Van Patten told TheWrap. “Lucy continues to be shocked by Stephen’s behavior towards her.”

With Stephen holding the knowledge that Lucy and Evan (Branden Cook) slept together since Evan confessed it to him at the end of last semester, Stephen confronts Lucy about it and gives her an ultimatum: continue their relationship and tell Bree (Catherine Missal) about Evan or prioritize Bree and lose her relationship with Stephen. In one of Lucy’s first of few good decisions in Season 3, she chooses Bree, ending their relationship in a moment that seems to puzzles Stephen.

“He’s just trying to play the game — I think he’s really trying to squeeze out any kind of manipulation he can,” White told TheWrap. “When it doesn’t go his way, I think he doesn’t know how to react … He always assumes things are going to go his way, and then when they don’t, he loses it.”

While Lucy’s choice meant to ensure that Bree wouldn’t find out that she was the mystery girl who slept with Evan, she’s shocked to see that Stephen called Bree, and then again to hear that Stephen “changed his mind” and would be spilling her secret — a decision that White said is pushed along by Stephen’s sister icing him out after learning of his manipulative ways.

“It’s the one thing he’s holding on to that’s real — he wants something,” White said of Stephen’s relationship with his sister. “It’s so cool to see that he does want some type of humanity. He has it in him. He’s not full lizard. He wants a little warmth … that’s the one thing he was holding on to, and then when that’s gone, it’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to burn everything down.'”

By the time Lucy confronted Stephen, she was desperate to contain the damage, offering up another piece of information that he could use over her instead: That she lied about being sexually assaulted. The asterisk here is that she lied to protect Pippa (Sonia Mena), who wants to keep the incident under wraps. But Stephen forced Lucy to make a tape confessing the lie, changing the key detail that she did so for attention.

“Her judgment is so clouded in that moment, and hurting Bree seems like the worst possible thing she could do, I think she’ll take any other way, which is why she even considers putting herself on tape,” Van Patten said. “I don’t think she’s thinking ahead. She just is so, so desperate to keep her friendship with Bree, because it is one of the most genuine connections that she has, and she sees how much Bree has been hurt by the people she loves, and she just doesn’t want to be added to that list.”

Van Patten notes the tape, which she calls “the biggest shock of all” and catapults Lucy and Stephen into “a different category of toxicity that we haven’t seen yet,” saying “I really thought they were already as worse as they possibly could be to each other, so this was the cherry on top of that, and really kicks off the rest of the season and makes it a completely different energy than the other two.”

The process of shooting the tape itself took almost a full day, per White, with Van Patten saying, “We knew how intense it was going into it, and we wanted to show the intensity as well, to make it as effective as possible.”

“It was just like anything else, but longer and more intricate, and we rehearsed it like a dance,” White said. “I think everyone was really happy with how it went. Grace was amazing … she carried that on her back, like the whole show.”

Once the tape is filmed, White said Stephen has a “loose plan” on when and if he might release it. “He’s always calculating, but not as much as people think,” White said, noting he’s also “improvisational.” “I think he knows what he wants and he knows what kind of a weapon it is, and he holds it tight.”

With Stephen telling Lucy he might not do anything with the tape in the same breath as suggesting he could send it to the entire student body, the implications and the unknown are “looming over her head” for the rest of the season.

“When is he going to release it? Is he going to release it? Is he still going to tell Bree?” Van Patten posed. “She’s in this constant state of anticipation and panic, and that drives her to do crazy things and make very bad choices.”

With Lucy hoping to protect both Bree through the tape and Pippa through the lie, Van Patten noted Lucy wants to maintain her friendship with both women, as well as portray a “calmness” with Stephen. “She’s really trying to people please for the rest of the season and just play it safe, because she’s so afraid of people turning on her and this tape being, really, just a ticking time bomb throughout the whole season, until it goes off.”

Almost immediately after filming the tape, Lucy ran to newcomer Alex (Costa D’ Angelo), with whom she pursues a sexual relationship that somewhat replicates the verbal abuse she’s received from Stephen.

“It’s a way to punish yourself, which is really heartbreaking,” Van Patten said. “It’s a metaphor for her whole thing with Stephen too — we accept the love we think we deserve, and she has accepted the way Stephen loves her, treats her and is now manufacturing that with somebody else.”

With Lucy gone and Evan and Wrigley not too thrilled with him, White noted Stephen experiences some solitude and consequences — a theme showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer is driving home this season. “People are getting into what he’s been doing and he’s alone, which is an interesting thing to play for him,” White said. “You see him in constant motion — You don’t really get to see him sitting with that discomfort, which he doesn’t do really. He has to take it out somewhere.”

As for what Van Patten and White can tease for what follows for the rest of the season, they warned fans to expect “explosive chaos.”

“Tell Me Lies” Season 3 drops new episodes Tuesdays at 12 a.m. ET/Mondays at 9 p.m. PT.

The post ‘Tell Me Lies’ Stars Break Down Season 3’s New Level of Toxicity, the Last Straw That Makes Stephen ‘Burn Everything Down’ appeared first on TheWrap.