‘Tell Me Lies’: Grace Van Patten On Toxic Relationships And Ensemble Acting [Interview]

Lucy is particularly interesting because, in the beginning, she’s very reserved, she’s called the ice queen, and she really keeps her emotions in check. But things happen, and she breaks down every once in a while. How do you express those moments where she is holding her emotions in check?
I definitely tapped into my younger self for that. I relate to being closed off and being afraid of being vulnerable and seeing that as a weakness when I was young. I think Lucy especially does that on purpose to protect herself. When she meets Stephen, she has zero control over her emotions the way that she wants to because she’s spent years building up this emotional wall for damage control. I think she knows how sensitive she is and, with Stephen, now the gates are open and all her emotions hit her like an explosion.

Were you involved at all in the process and casting Jackson White as Stephen?
We did a lot of chemistry reads. I remember reading the script and thinking how hard of a part that is for an actor because on the page, he’s a monster, and the goal was to find somebody who could really bring humanity to it and make it feel genuine and make it justified. No one else did that. But Jackson came in, and you had empathy for him. He brought such a vulnerability to it. That hopefully makes the audience feel that when Lucy is failing in the show that she’s confused, and she keeps going back to him because he has this quality that’s so magnetic. 

Do you feel like you’ve learned a bit about how the dynamics of toxic relationships work through the process of creating this relationship?
Definitely, yeah. I think the whole thing is that there’s no rhyme or reason to it and every type of person can get caught up in it. I think that was important for me to show – that it’s not just weak people that can be caught up in this. It can be really strong people who get sucked in. Lucy is not a victim, and she doesn’t get caught up in it because she’s weak, she gets caught up in it because she’s experiencing all these new feelings that she’s never felt before. She latches on to them.

There are a lot of really intimate scenes and some violent scenes in the show. Was there a particular scene, whether for physical or emotional reasons, that was difficult to film?
It was very intimate and scary. I remember reading the script and being like, oh, my gosh, this is a lot. But it’s so important for the story to show the sexual awakening of people at that age and the dynamic that it creates. Thankfully, we have intimacy coordinators now who make everyone feel very safe and comfortable in order to do all of those scenes. That was a blessing for sure. Also, just feeling comfortable with everyone and with Jackson, and Meaghan Oppenheimer, the showrunner, creating a really safe environment so that we could be vulnerable.

The series is set over eight years. How did you show the changes in Lucy’s personality between the different years?
That was a challenge because we don’t really know what happens within the eight years, it’s kind of up in the air. We definitely talked about it and tried to make specific choices, knowing that it could change if we do get a second season. We shot the engagement party on the very first day. So we all kind of scrambled to figure out at least big moments that have happened within those eight years that we can react to. But we don’t know, that’s part of the mystery. The hook when this first season ends is what happened between these two people? How do they separate from one another? How did they get out of it? Will they reconnect?

What do you think audiences will find the most intriguing about the show?

GVP: I think everyone will just relate to it a lot. Whether you relate to a specific character at that time, at a specific time in your life, or you’ve been in a toxic relationship or a toxic friendship, or the feeling you had when you started college. I think everyone is going to latch on to a certain character, a certain aspect of the show, and hopefully, that hooks them to keep watching because you really learn about these characters as they learn about themselves. That’s what I really loved about the show.

This, “Nine Perfect Strangers,” and several of your films have been large ensemble casts. What do you find creatively interesting about working within ensembles?

GVP: It’s my favorite. I love watching shows like that. Those are my favorite shows, when you get to see a group of people all coming from different places and see how they react to each other. In this show, everyone is so different. All the characters are so different. I love seeing how people who wouldn’t normally be in a situation together react when you put them together. Another layer in this show is that they’re all putting on a front and none of them are really being themselves and being honest with themselves. So it made me curious if they were all honest with themselves, how would they interact differently?