The ‘We Were Liars’ Cast on Bringing a Beloved Book to Life and Playing Unlikable Characters
Words and Videography: Charlotte Amy Landrum | Photography: Lewis Vorn | Creative Direction: Ione Gamble | Special thanks to: Mackenzie Rutledge and Allie Hall
I used to think I had a decent idea of all the moving parts it took to create a large scale film or TV project until I walked onto the set of We Were Liars last August in Canada. It takes time to get your head around being in a huge house that isn’t ‘real’ if you have never been on a set that scale before: Lights beaming through the windows to replicate sunlight, fake food that you have to poke to check if it is real, the awe at the amount of detail in every corner reminding you of all the people it takes to bring a production to fruition.
Walking out into Nova Scotia after a few hours on this uncanny set, following a flight from London, can do things to a person – but being in the thick of a production that will almost certainly bring great teen drama television back into popular culture got rid of my jet lag and spatial confusion pretty quickly.
Eight months after getting a cheeky picture under the window crest of the Sinclair family – the fictional residents of the house – and shooting the four Liars played by Emily Lind, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada, and Shubham Maheshwari, I reconvened with them on Zoom to discuss the making of We Were Liars, their favourite parts of their Nova Scotia summer, and making the readers of the original We Were Liars books proud.
If you are into YA fiction you will already know the title We Were Liars, the novel by E. Lockhart, which won the Goodreads Choice Awards Best Young Adult Fiction in 2014 and has spent a long time dominating BookTok. Viral TikToks about the books feature mostly young women holding the book up to camera with tears in their eyes: ‘I’m not okay’ reads the on-screen text. Despite how it may look, the sobbing is a positive – a sign of a dedicated, deeply invested fandom that sees the characters as a part of themselves. As showrunner Julie Plec explains to me: “It's the passion of that fandom that gave us the platform with which to go to Amazon and say, ‘Please, let us make this story that we love so much.’”
We Were Liars has the thematics you crave when you’re young but feel grown up: The drama, the secrets, the romance, and most importantly, characters who are imperfect, flawed and have made their fair share of mistakes. “I was trying to write a novel that would devastate people and make them feel their humanity,” author E. Lockhart notes over email, and I think it’s safe to say, through the outpourings of emotion online, she did just that.
“If we were to strip back everyone's lives and look at it with a magnifying glass and see the true self behind every single one of our facades, we'd be goddamn unlikable too.”
Nuances of damaged characters, family dynamics and wealth disparities run through We Were Liars, and protagonist Cadence, played by Emily Lind, is in the depths of it. “There's so much about Cadence that is unlikeable, and I say that with all the love in my heart,” Emily tells me over a video call, sporting newly cut short hair and holding her dog, Rocky Lou, “But in the end, if we were to strip back everyone's lives and look at it with a magnifying glass and see the true self behind every single one of our facades, we'd be goddamn unlikable too.”
As the show opens, Cadence wakes up in a newly built Brutalist home, in place of her childhood summer house, the Martha's Vineyard style Sinclair estate, no one is telling her what happened on a fateful 2015 summer night that changed everything. It’s up to the 17 year old to figure it out for herself, although it’s not just the teenagers in the whirlwind – every person in the Sinclair family is hiding something.
“Some of my favourite scenes are with the moms,” says Esther McGregor, the tattoo artist, model and actress who plays the artsy and observant Mirren, Cadence’s cousin and daughter to Bess Sinclair, played by The Vampire Diaries royalty Candice King. Esther’s eyes widen as she reminisces on the drama: “That mess is just curated in heaven. It's so infatuating and entertaining, but also preposterous. It's interesting because the kids project this idea of perfection on their parents, which they in turn, want to be.”
Indeed, while the four Liars have their own covert inner workings under the Massachusetts sun, whispers and side-eyes pervade inside the Sinclair estate from their mothers too: Bess, Carrie (Mamie Gummer), and Penny (Caitlin Fitzgerald). These three sisters grapple with grief and conflicting personalities alongside the teens, reminding us that we never really grow out of the desire to gossip.
Whilst the wealthy Sinclairs deal with their family politics, there is a Liar on the sidelines, watching with an outsiders perspective that may align more with the viewer’s own: Gat Patil. Played by Shubham Maheshwari, this is his very first role, secured after spotting the We Were Liars casting call on the talent search website Backstage. Gat, who has a working class background and is of Indian descent, has the social awareness to see through the facade of the Sinclairs. He attends the estate every year as his uncle, Ed (Rahul Kohli), is in a relationship with Carrie, and his close friendship with Cadence grows near to romance as the summers add up.
Complex relationships are essential for any good teen drama, but the dynamics between Cadence and Gat in particular, as well as Gat’s relationship with the rest of the Sincairs, is a focus that invites the audience to really consider the privileges these characters have despite their personal troubles. “I feel like most of us can at some point in our lives relate to that feeling of changing yourself to try to fit in, you know?” Shubham shares with me. “Being someone else just so that they can fit in, but they're still feeling out of place.”
“You never want to underestimate your audience. With this show, we really tried to dig a little deeper and layer in all the subtleties and the subjects that you'd look for in an adult drama in general.”
Between being a teenage girl navigating domestic fallout and a young person trying to mould themselves into an uninviting world, it’s clear why young people have latched onto the We Were Liars story, and why their anticipation to see the novel adapted for the screen is so apparent. “It’s got the thriller aspect, the humour, the family lore, love, hate, deceit… It really encapsulates a lot. It has all of the intrigue that you would want to have when it comes to the show,” Esther adds.
Back in the 2000s, the golden age of teen drama television that gave us Gossip Girl (2007), The Vampire Diaries (2009), and Pretty Little Liars (2010, but still counts), millennial viewers lived for their secrets, romantic duos (or trios), and the fantasy that the characters could one day be us when we were a little older – but times have changed. Never-ending rewatches of these shows will rightly happen, but for the Gen Z audience who will be running to their televisions and laptops when We Were Liars is released, they want more than the peplum tops, skinny jeans and gossip texted over Blackberry phones that dominated the past.
They are not the millennials who came before them who may have felt satisfied with stories of betrayal in glamorous East Village brownstones, and they want new media that recognises the troubles they face in a tumultuous world they have grown up in. Showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie confirms that We Were Liars won’t be a pandering tale of what adults think young people want to watch: “You never want to underestimate your audience. With this show, we really tried to dig a little deeper and layer in all the subtleties and the subjects that you'd look for in an adult drama in general. I like to assume that my audience is smarter than I am, and challenge myself to meet them there.”
The character of Gat in the midst of the Sinclairs’ privileges allows the show to explore facets of teen drama television in a way we rarely see: subjective and critical, particularly in regards to the nonchalant displays of wealth. “My first impression of Gat was that he was thoughtful,” Shubham explains. “He was intelligent, he thought differently, at least in comparison to the other characters. He saw the world differently, and he was immediately very interesting to me.”
The class politics of watching rich people navigate their lives on screen aside, there’s solid escapism to be found in the world of shows like We Were Liars – to imagine ourselves in a perpetual state of summer, and during filming, the Liars were in the ideal place to enjoy the real deal.
For the short time we were on set, Lind, McGregor, Zada, and Maheshwari brought energy to a height I didn't think would be possible after months of work and faux daylight. There was a constant echo of laughter and scattering of inside jokes from weeks before. “I would listen to Lady (Hear Me Tonight) to get in the mood for Johnny’s happy scenes,” Joseph Zada tells me (Zada is the Australian born actor who plays the charismatic Johnny Sinclair and who is set to play young Haymitch in the highly anticipated The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.) Despite Johnny’s breezy personality and position as the Jester of the four Liars, he holds a higher purpose for the show's dynamics as he explores his sexuality. “I would dance in front of everyone as well, because Johnny’s such a loose character. I feel like dancing in front of people, because I suck at dancing, made all the acting biz a little less silly.”
When asking the four for their favourite days on set, it’s received as an impossible question – but special mentions are shooting the lemon hunt scene which Esther describes as “A good yellow day”, the underwater scenes that included Emily beating Joseph at holding their breath the longest (he demanded a retry), and swimming at the beach on the hottest day of summer in Nova Scotia. Still, the overall consensus is there’s too many to narrow down. As Shubham answers: “Anytime we four were together.”
We Were Liars holds personal milestones for Emily, Esther, Shaubaum and Joseph in different ways, but collectively they all play a part in bringing a beloved novel to life. The pressure is there, but faith the fans will fall in love is rightly present with everyone involved. “It was really, really important to all of us that it did justice, it felt familiar, it felt familial, and it honoured the book.” Emily tells me. “It lives alone as its own entity, and it's been there for so long, kind of like someone you know who's been single for a few years and now they're ready to date someone, and we’re their new green flag boyfriend.”
Like all good boyfriends, everyone can’t wait to hard launch. No more Close Friends teasers of the back of their head: it’s time to meet the Sinclair family and have a teen television renaissance.