‘Tell Me Lies’ Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer on Revealing Emotional Truths

Hulu’s hit drama about young adults, a bad romance, and the fallout among their friends is called Tell Me Lies, but it aims for emotional truth, said showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer.

“A big part of the point of the show is how these sorts of relationships can cause blindness and cause you to make mistakes that maybe people on the outside would see coming, but when you’re in it, you can’t see it,” she said.

Now in its third season, Tell Me Lies launched with the tumultuous story of Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White), introducing their college hookup, toxic pull on each other—and repercussions eight years in the future at a wedding. As it jumps between roughly 2008 and 2015, the show follows their larger circle of friends and their troubles within their acidic orbit.

Called “one of the rawest, and admittedly most infuriating, depictions of young adulthood in recent memory,” Tell Me Lies can be a tough watch, tackling substance abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault, among its distrust and jealousies. But the characters tend to deceive themselves as much as one another.

“I haven’t really had to try and make these characters lie,” Oppenheimer said. “I’m focused more on just the way that unhealthy relationships, both romantic and platonic, can erode communication. And when you go from that angle, the lies just happen organically. … If you lie in a big way once, there are a thousand little lies that you have to tell to cover that.”

Here, Oppenheimer spills the beans about juggling multiple timelines and character arcs, an enthusiastic fan base, and where she finds inspiration.

Tell Me Lies loosely adapts the 2018 novel by Carola Lovering. Oppenheimer (We Are Your Friends, Fear the Walking Dead) said Sasha Silver, Hulu’s head of drama series, liked a spec feature she’d written years ago and asked her to pitch her take on the book.

While “the emotional DNA of the book is really there,” the writers had to expand the plot to fit a TV series. Internalized thoughts from the novel played into subtext and the characters’ lies, even to themselves.

“We talk about each character’s arcs in the season, but we also talk about what are the major turning points of the season as a whole in each timeline. So first we’ll look at the college years, and we’ll say what’s the beginning, middle and end of this timeline, and then within that, we will individually go through every character arc but also each relationship arc,” she said. “Certain episodes are heavier for some characters than others, and that’s OK. It’s just about taking a step back and making sure that when all is said and done, it’s a little bit more even.”

WritersRoom Pro, software developed during the pandemic, helps the show’s team weave all that together, Oppenheimer said. “It allows us to have individual boards for every character and individual boards for every relationship, so we can treat each relationship as its own story.”

The actual writers’ room has space for only two to four boards. With the software, the team can create alternate boards based on possible plot threads, color code characters, and store what didn’t work for possible use later.

“I keep everything in terms of notes. You never know when something it might work later on, even if initially you thought it wasn’t going to work based on how things get reworked or moved around,” she said.

Since its 2022 debut, Tell Me Lies has racked up an 80% favorable rating on the “Popcornmeter,” a measure of audience approval on RottenTomatoes.com, along with Reddit threads and YouTube videos dissecting the characters’ moves. One publication called it “more manipulative and dysfunctional than ever,” quoting fans from social media posts such as, “On second thought, watching three episodes of the latest season of Tell Me Lies right before bed was probably not the best thing for my nervous system."

Van Patten, who is dating White in real life, told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that fans will address them as their characters in public and encourage Lucy or Stephen to ditch each other for good. They’ll also question Lucy’s choices, having the benefit of those time jumps.

Even Oppenheimer finds herself under the microscope at times.

“One thing I have noticed, and I don’t know if this is just as a female writer, [but] I’m surprised at people’s sometimes inability to separate the storyteller from the story and understand that just because you’re writing a certain story, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your own life,” she said. “People think that because I’m telling this one story, there must be overlap in my life. That’s been interesting because it is entirely fictional.”

While she’s “very accepting of the fact that you’re never going to please everyone,” she likes learning what intrigues the audience on a broader scale. “What are they asking a lot of questions about? Not even specific plot questions, but what kind of core aspects of the show are they interested in?”

For instance, after Lucy’s roommate died in a car wreck after a party in season one, the writers wondered if viewers would be more interested in unraveling those circumstances. Instead, they gravitated more to the interpersonal dynamics and the larger ensemble.

“I don’t worry about the audience getting frustrated if Lucy makes mistakes or if she doesn’t always learn when she should, because I think it’s realistic. In real life, we don’t always learn a lesson when we should,” Oppenheimer said. “For me, it’s OK if Lucy fails a million times as long as she fails in different ways and for different reasons. I worry more about the storylines not getting repetitive or redundant.”

To keep the show fresh, Oppenheimer uses imagination and observations.

“I really like to live in the what-if of life. I’m always thinking about, What if this happened? What if that happened? And I go down these rabbit holes… I draw on inspiration from things I see in real life. I have known a lot of very complicated people who do things that don’t maybe make a lot of sense until you really investigate on a closer level why they’re doing that. It’s a lot of sitting alone in my office and just thinking about what could possibly happen that we haven’t already done. And as long as it feels honest and believable, then I’ll go for it, as long as we’re not doing it just for shock value.”

She’ll also read other books to fire a creative spark. Her favorite, John Steinbeck’s 1952 family East of Eden, sits on her desk at all times. “It’s so perfect and so good,” she said. “Sometimes when I am getting a little stuck, I will open up a chapter and read it out of order, just because I find it inspiring. I think my writing always gets better when I’m reading. And it doesn’t need to be stuff that relates to what you’re writing. It just needs to get your brain moving.”

For other writers tackling an ensemble story or a plot with twists and time jumps, she suggested marking guideposts for at least the beginning, middle, and end before you begin. “Otherwise, you can kind of write yourself into a corner.”

Don’t forget to step back and view key parts such as pacing with an honest eye.

“We can get really sort of indulgent with just ideas that we’re into, or where we want to showcase our writing ability. So you have to put your ego aside and just ask, 'Am I boring the audience, even if I find this piece of writing beautiful or impressive?'” she said. “At the end of the day, we’re here to entertain.”

Tell Me Lies is streaming on Hulu.