Tell Me Lies continues to push the envelope, raising eyebrows with a surprise masturbation moment involving Lucy and Stephen.
During the Tuesday, January 27, episode of the hit Hulu series, Lucy’s (Grace Van Patten) lie about being sexually assaulted continued to haunt her at college. She was even questioned by current love interest Alex (Costa D’Angelo), who thought their aggressive sex was Lucy’s attempt to work through her trauma.
The episode ended with Lucy’s mental health deteriorating — leading up to her masturbating to a toxic voicemail from ex Stephen (Jackson White). Creator Meaghan Oppenheimer spoke exclusively to Us Weekly about exploring Lucy — and Alex’s — complicated trauma through their sex lives.
“First of all, dealing with trauma was really important — specifically in how it comes out in their sexual relationship,” she explained. “With Alex, before this season we saw sexual trauma and violence with a lot of the female characters. Even emotional sexual violence against women.”
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Season 3 gave Oppenheimer, 39, a chance to dig even deeper.
“We hadn’t seen that manifest as much with a male character. I feel like a lot of times, I don’t see that on screen and it’s a disservice to men. It was really important to me to explore that with a male character,” she noted. “With Lucy, we’ve seen the little hints of her shaming herself. But she really goes into it in an inescapable way this season.”
Oppenheimer called it “very organic and realistic” for Lucy to work through her issues in an unconventional way, adding, “These two characters would find each other in the sense that Lucy’s seeking shame and seeking punishment because she feels like she deserves it — so she’s asking for that in sex. It just was something that I hadn’t seen really explored before in that way. That is always something that’s interesting to me. I’m always trying to explore sex as a conversation in the show.”
She continued: “It made sense to me that Lucy — after everything she’s been through — there is a disconnect between her internal and external world. It’s fragmenting. She’s not able to keep the two aligned, if that makes sense.”
Based on Carola Lovering‘s novel of the same name, Tell Me Lies follows the messy relationship between college students Lucy and Stephen. Their problematic on-and-off romance lasts eight years — and everyone around them is affected by Lucy and Stephen’s ups and downs.
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White and Van Patten, both 29, recently spoke with Us about connecting to their characters — despite their concerning decisions.
“Three years of something is very hard,” White shared about playing the unpopular character. “I’ve never done that before. But I think we do a pretty good job of bringing some truth [to it].”
Van Patten had a similar process relating to Lucy. “It’s like any role I play where in order for the audience to understand them, we have to really understand them,” she said during the joint interview. “That means potentially justifying things we as humans might not justify. But in order to give service to the character, we have to find ways to understand that and understand their choices and find the truth in them.”
She continued: “That’s the fun part for me. And it’s really exciting — especially over three seasons — to go through Lucy’s actions and impulses.”
New episodes of Tell Me Lies premiere Tuesdays on Hulu.
