Yahoo Lifestyle Everything We Know About The ‘We Were Liars’ Show So Far
Prime Video’s next YA book-based TV show with a big audience and set at the beach will likely be We Were Liars, based on the book by E. Lockhart.
The rights to the best-selling novel were optioned in 2022 by Julie Plec’s My So-Called Company and Universal Television.
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Read on for everything we know about the We Were Liars television series:
When will We Were Liars come out?
A release date hasn’t been specified for the series.
Is We Were Liars in production?
Yes! The series is in production, and according to pilot director Nzingha Stewart, the first episode has been shot.
Who will be in We Were Liars?
Emily Alyn Lind (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), Subham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor (Baby Girl) and Joseph Zada (Total Control), will play the titular four liars, or the main quartet of kids that take center stage in Lockhart’s novel.
Lind plays Cadence, the eldest Sinclair granddaughter of the family who has a fling one summer and fights a traumatic brain injury the next. Maheshwari will play Gat, a New York City kid who is thoughtful, smart and ambitious, but who feels he sticks out against the elite on the private island owned by the Sinclair family. McGregor plays Mirren, an artest who watches the world closely. Zada will play Johnny, the reckless, chaotic and charming ringleader of the four liars’ trouble-making.
Mamie Gummer (True Detective), Caitlin FitzGerald (Succession) and Candice King (The Vampire Diaries) will also play leads — the three Sinclair sisters.
The Vampire Diaries creator Julie Plec spoke to Deadline about reuniting with Candice King on the project.
“Carina [Adly Mackenzie] and I, from almost day one, were writing Bess in Candice’s voice…but we thought she was too young, and we didn’t think we’d be able to get her hired. Then we realized that we didn’t care,” she told Deadline, laughing. :Candice has a very grown up, mom soul, in addition to being this young, vibrant woman. We knew she could do it, and we just decided to put her forward and hope for the best and keep our fingers crossed and prepared to go into battle for her. And then nobody said no. Everyone just thought it was a great idea. All of our anxieties were for not.”
“And honestly, if Caroline Forbes is the part she was born to play, Bess Sinclair is the part that she’s meant to play next. They’re the same person, just separated by two generations and some children.”
Gummer will play Carrie Sinclair, eldest daughter of wealthy media mogul and patriarc TK. Her parents own Beechwood Island, where the family vacations every summer. She has two sons, but the upcoming summer may challenge her sobriety.
FitzGerald will play Penny Sinclair, who breeds golden retrievers and is in the midst of a messy divorce.
King plays Bess Sinclair, the youngest daughter of the Sinclairs. She has three children, and her meticulousness and organization know no bounds.
David Morse also stars as their father, Harris Sinclair.
Rahul Kohli (The Fall of the House of Usher), replaced Arsher Ali in the series-regular role of Ed, partner of Carrie.
Wendy Crewson (Tracker, Gray) is set for a heavily recurring role, as is
Who else is behind We Were Liars?
The series is written and executive produced by Plec and MacKenzie, with the former writing the first episode and the latter writing the second. Executive producers also include Emily Cummins for My So-Called Company and the novel’s author, Lockhart. Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, and Amazon MGM Studios are the studios. Nzingha Stewart will be directing the first episode.
The show was given a series order by Prime Video in March 2023.
What is We Were Liars about?
Set on the Sinclair family’s privately owned island off the coast of Massachusetts, the story explores the lives of the perfect-on-the-surface Sinclair family, who have secrets among them. The three Sinclair daughters and their children spend every summer on Beechwood Island.
Something happens to Cadence at 15 years old one summer, and her the other three liars prompt her to remember the full story two years later.
How will Lockhart’s prequel book Family of Liars fit into all of this?
Plec will also adapt the prequel book, which tells the secretive story of a different Sinclair generation.
In an interview with Deadline, Plec hinted that there are already hopes for a Season 2 of the series, which may feature more of the plot of Family of Liars as she says it would focus on the mothers’ lives.
I think fans of the book are going to be very, very happy, because I think we hit all the marks and all the beats that the book does, and then also expand the universe,” she said. “Layers upon layers upon layers to really make the adult characters really nuanced and really multi layered, and to set the stage for Season 2, which theoretically is going to take us deeper into the moms’ lives as well and add another generation to the story.”
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