'Tell Me Lies' Season 2: Grace Van Patten, Jackson White amp up 'insanely toxic' spats as the story turns to other characters

Tell Me Lies Season 2 (on Disney+ in Canada, Hulu in the U.S.), starring Grace Van Patten and Jackson White, kicks things up a notch from its first season. Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer doesn't just lean into the volatility of the relationship between Lucy Albright (Van Patten) and Stephen DeMarco (White), but we're diving deeper into the friend group that surrounds these two with their own twisted, steamy and dangerous storylines.

Picking up as Lucy begins her sophomore year of college in September 2008, she's navigating spending time with her friends when Stephen is always around, after he rekindled his relationship with Diana (Alicia Crowder). As you expect, it's not an easy situation for Lucy.

"I really didn't know what to expect. I had never been in a situation going into a second season, so I was really nervous that I wasn't going to be able to get back to her," Van Patten told Yahoo Canada about stepping into Lucy's shoes again for Season 2. "It instantly clicks back once you're on set with everyone, and in the wardrobe and in the makeup and saying those insanely toxic lines to each other."

But Lucy does get a new distraction with Gossip Girl alum Thomas Doherty joining the cast as Leo.

"I thought it was a really smart move to bring in a new love interest, because I think it really shows the ... effects of the toxic relationship ... and projecting past trauma onto somebody new, and not kind of taking in the person in front of you," Van Patten said. "The purpose of Lucy diving into a relationship with Leo is distraction and trying to see if she has a chance with anybody else, and trying to explore that and realizing that she may not, and that she and Stephen still have unfinished business."

But don't think that's the end of the volatile relationship between Lucy and Stephen. In fact, it's more destructive than before.

"The challenge was, obviously, how do we keep that tension alive while not even having them in the same room?" Oppenheimer explained. "It's like, no matter how hard she tries to beat him, it's almost impossible to escape from his web."

White highlighted that finding that dynamic back-and-forth with Van Patten in Tell Me Lies is "the best."

"It's great. It's so loaded," White said. "We're so safe and free with each other, so we get to show up and just try things, and be free and [not be self-conscious], and a lot of that's unspoken."

"We created so much of that dynamic the first season, so it didn't require a lot of work to kind of get into that zone with each other. There was an amazing, safe, comfortable foundation built that we were just able to kind of catapult off of this season, which was so nice going into it knowing that and feeling secure about that."

And let's not forget that Lucy knows about Stephen's involvement in Macy's death, and we're waiting to see if she chooses to share that information.

"We had to make it believable that she would have a reason not to tell that, after what he did to her in Season 1, and we had to build enough emotional stakes for her where if she were to tell ... it would destroy her life," Oppenheimer said

"Also, it makes him more vulnerable to her, which he obviously realizes later on in this season. It's, 'Here's this person who does know me in a way that no one else has ever known me.' And so it, in a way, makes her closer to him than anyone has ever been."

'She is someone who has been taught to side with powerful men'

Aside from the Lucy and Stephen drama, Tell Me Lies Season 2 provides more in-depth stories about the people that surround them.

While Diana (Alicia Crowder) has largely been a character that existed under Stephen's shadow as his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend, now we get a softer and more nuanced side of the character. That includes a particularly impactful moment when she's told that she's not a girl who checks on girls and that she's "brutal" with other women.

"With Diana, having her hear that I think was an important moment, because she is someone who has been taught to side with powerful men," Oppenheimer said. "Being called not a girls girl is one of the worst insults, I think, ... it would devastate me to hear that."

"But I also think we have to find sympathy for those women, because we're in a society where sometimes people are in situations where they have to side with powerful men just to stay afloat. Because unfortunately we live in a very unfair, grotesque, misogynistic world. ... I think some of the moments, it's always that thing of, no matter how much you dislike another girl, there are certain things you will always be able to bond over or empathize with that other people just don't understand. And there are certain universal experiences that I think can happen between female friendships."

Sex and conversations about consent

While Tell Me Lies Season 2 still has all the sexy and steamy scenes that made headlines when the series premiered, Oppenheimer's show continues to be honest in its depiction of sex, from seeing intimate partners have conversations about using condoms, to individuals vocalizing what they want in intimate moments.

"I always want sex to be a part of the story and not just there to be sexy or to be shocking," Oppenheimer said. "There's so many different kinds of sex. Sometimes sex is sexy and good, sometimes it's incredibly awkward, sometimes it's very embarrassing, sometimes it's very sad. And so it was just important to me to show all the different kinds."

The show also focuses on consent, and not in the dangerously oversimplified definition of "yes" and "no," but the full scope of what shouldn't be considered consent.

"I was in school when the show was set, I was in school in 2008, and the conversation around consent was so different," Oppenheimer said. "I mean, it didn't really exist. It was important to go deeper there."