‘Tell Me Lies’ Duo Grace Van Patten and Jackson White on That Videotape Scene: “F***ing Awful”

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[Thisstorycontainsspoilersfromthethirdepisodeof[Thisstorycontainsspoilersfromthethirdepisodeof Tell Me Lies season three, “Repent.”]

There was a Tell Me Lies season two storyline that creator Meaghan Oppenheimer thought might get her canceled. In the show’s college-set timeline, Lucy (Grace Van Patten) lied about being sexually assaulted to protect her friend Pippa (Sonia Mena) from having to reveal her own assault. “Anything that makes our writers in the room argue with each other, I always lean in,” Oppenheimer said at the time.

That divisive storyline continues in season three, which is now streaming its first three episodes. In the third episode, “Repent,” Lucy’s psychological puppet master boyfriend Stephen (Jackson White) weaponizes the fact that Lucy lied about being raped. After finding out that Lucy slept with his friend Evan (Brendan Cook) when they were broken up, he threatens to tell Lucy’s best friend Bree (Cat Missal), who was dating Evan at the time. The only way he won’t spill her secret is if she gives him an even bigger one to hold over her.

So Stephen records Lucy, over and over, confessing about her lie and manipulating her into believing she has no choice but to apologize on camera, and Stephen holds onto the tape. Lucy and Stephen have broken up, and the video plays for viewers when Lucy then begins sleeping with someone else, a drug dealer from Bree’s past named Alex (Costa D’Angelo), whom she asks to call her “fucking pathetic” while they have sex.

“She’s in such a shame spiral that she believes this is what she deserves,” Oppenheimer explained to The Hollywood Reporter after the three-episode premiere about the episode, which she called “fucking brilliant.” The creator continued, “There’s a part of her that has learned with her relationship with Stephen to conflate chemistry with toxicity. … Intercutting [the video] with the sex scene made that clearer.”

Below, Van Patten and White spoke together toTHR about how they filmed the difficult video scene, as White reveals he has walked off set over some of Stephen’s scenes and the pair, who have been dating since meeting on the show, talk about how they decompress after filming those toxic moments.

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I have a toxic relationship with this show and your characters and this friend group because I want to see you together. How do you each approach passing judgment on Lucy and Stephen? And are you able to put aside worrying about how viewers will judge them this season?

JACKSON WHITE I think it’s not up to us how people perceive it. I think it’s really exciting to just go in there and try and be honest and have fun doing it. And people have very visceral reactions to the show, which is really cool. It means I’m doing a good job.

GRACE VAN PATTEN I also think it’s past the point of no return in terms of judging them. We can’t change them, and we have to play them. So I try not to judge. I try to just find Lucy’s reasoning for everything so I can make it as honest as possible. It’s really fun to hear the reactions and opinions of all these characters, because they’re all pretty polarizing and controversial.

Right off the bat this season in the 2015 wedding timeline, Pippa (Sonia Mena) reminds Lucy that Stephen almost ruined her life sophomore year of college. Then these first three episodes are whiplash with them back in college, leading up to this videotape recording in episode three. How many times did you film Lucy and Stephen’s argument, and Stephen forcing Lucy to confess that she lied about sexual assault on tape?

WHITE Grace, how many times did you do that?

VAN PATTEN The actual recording of the tape wasn’t a lot, but that scene was a whole day. It was a 10-page scene. So it was rehearsing it and talking through it and running it, and we definitely did it a good amount of times. It was really important for all of us to get it right. And it was a lot of movement within a small space. There were a lot of factors. It was a really intense scene, and we all knew it.

WHITE You did such a great job in that scene with that confession, Grace. So amazing.

VAN PATTEN You were fucking awful.

WHITE Yes, thank you. I know. I hate him.

VAN PATTEN I hate that guy. (Laughs.)

WHITE It’s so icky. I want to take him off like a skin suit. Get the hell off me, dude.

Jackson, are you able to shake him off when you’re in production, or is it not until you finally wrap filming that you really shed Stephen?

WHITE I’m not staying in that guy for longer than I have to. I’ve had to walk off set a few times just from sheer discomfort of saying certain things he says and doing things he does, but that’s just part of the job. You take on what you’re doing. But for the most part, I leave him at work and head home and try and veg out and then go back. I’ve gotten better at that.

As a couple who leaves work together, have you developed a process or do you have any ways that you support yourselves through some of those really challenging scenes?

WHITE Just stuff you do after your job.

VAN PATTEN Food, TV.

WHITE Yeah, yeah. Just take care of yours[self]and veg out.

VAN PATTEN We do get really specific about our movie watching set up. We both found apartments in Toronto where we were filming, and we would spend hours setting up a contraption to have the best movie-watching experience.

WHITE It’s kind of like what you do on certain drugs where you get all cracked up and you start building things. That’s kind of what we do, but we’re not on drugs and we build forts. I bet you didn’t expect this answer! (Laughs.) You have to have the right lumbar support and the right wall for the projector. And then we haven’t watched anything. Because we’ve just been building it, and then we go to bed.

Grace, since Lucy and Stephen’s relationship is nothing like yours in real life, what do you tap into?

VAN PATTEN I haven’t been through a lot of things Lucy has been through, but I’ve been young and immature and have made bad decisions, like everybody has. It’s about finding the common denominator sometimes so it still feels truthful to me, even if it’s not necessarily the same thing.

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The first three episodes of Tell Me Lies are currently streaming on Hulu. Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter ‘s Tell Me Liescoverage, including premiere postmortems with Jackson White and creator Meaghan Oppenheimer.