*This story contains spoilers*
Season three of Tell Me Lies does not ease viewers back in. It lunges. The season opened up in the aftermath of Stephen (Jackson White) sending Bree (Catherine Missal) a voice recording of her fiancé Evan (Branden Cook) confessing to the affair, moments before she was due to walk down the aisle in the show’s 2015-set timeline. It was information the audience already had, but Bree didn’t.
As fans then step back to the 2008 timeline, viewers watch Stephen’s growing fixation on punishment rather than reconciliation in the wake of learning about Lucy and Evan’s tryst. By episode three, the stakes turn brutal.
Although Lucy chooses her friend Bree over Stephen, she cannot live with him holding the secret over her head. Instead, she offers something worse: a recorded confession admitting she lied about being sexually assaulted. It is a moment that redefines the show’s cruelty.
Stephen coerces Lucy into reframing the lie, no longer about protecting a friend, but about wanting attention and immediately recognises the tape for what it is: leverage. What follows is among the most unsettling sequences Tell Me Lies has staged.
Stephen has always been capable of damage but watching him methodically coach that confession out of Lucy lands differently. After breaking her down, he tells her he will not release the video. Yet, he plans to keep it, indefinitely.
For viewers, the tension is suffocating, not just because of what happens, but because of how far the show is willing to go. Filming those scenes, it turns out, was as confronting as watching them.
Speaking to The Standard, White, who is the real-life partner of Van Patten, said of filming the season’s most difficult moments: “I've walked out a couple times. I remember because… it just takes me, I have to, like, step out and exactly like you said, come back to reality a little bit and then go back in because it's hard, you know?”
“Well, it's just icky,” Van Patten added. “We have to do awful things on this show, and it doesn't make you feel good.”
Discussing the trust they’ve built up over the years, she continued: “But in terms of that stays on set. I think after three seasons there's a clear separation and boundary of all the characters versus all of us playing them and the safety and the trust is so engraved in us that it is such a safe space to do that and do those types of scenes, which is such a blessing to have that and to be able to feel okay going there, because, you know, it's you trust each other.”
Stephen and Lucy now feel locked in open warfare, asked how they might look back on these characters once the season is over, White paused. He shared: “That’s a good question… I don't know. Look it's such a formative time in our lives that we got. To do together, everything.
“I think we'll look back and be super proud and excited for what we all made together. Yes, no matter what the content was, I just think, as a as a show, I'm very proud of it. We're all going to be really proud of it.”
“And Lucy and Steven will be like that toxic couple we all remember, hopefully,” Van Patten concluded.
The first three episodes of Tell Me Lies Season 3 available now on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland, episodes drop weekly
