Spoilers for the Tell Me Lies series finale ahead.
There’s not a lot that the internet—and fandoms in particular—are in agreement on. So it feels notable that viewers of Tell Me Lies, Hulu’s juicy college-set melodrama, which aired its series finale episode on February 17, have reached a consensus: the core cast of characters are terrible, despicable, nasty people.
Bree, played by Cat Missal, was the one quasi-exception to this otherwise steadfast rule, though as Missal herself notes, “The bar was pretty low.” Bree instigated a relationship with her married professor and surrounded herself with said terrible, despicable people—and still fans clung to the belief that deep down she was a Good Person. That, if anything, she was simply a victim of her circumstances.
Then the tables turned: Bree cheated on her boyfriend, Evan, with her best friend Pippa’s boyfriend, Wrigley. She then released a damning videotape in which her other best friend, Lucy, admitted to lying about being sexually assaulted, unaware that Lucy had been “protecting” Pippa. As a result Lucy was expelled from college.
Creator Meaghan Oppenheimer opens up to Glamour about that juicy ending.
After everything she’d been through—being cheated on, being gaslit by the professor and his wife, being let down by her own mother—Bree had finally snapped.
“I feel like it was fun to have that kind of spark of evil,” Missal tells Glamour of catching up to other characters’ mean streaks. “But ultimately, it’s just such a sad situation.”
As series creator Meaghan Oppenheimer (whose real-life husband, Tom Ellis, played the aforementioned married professor, Oliver), explains, “We had to push Bree to her absolute rock bottom, and have everyone in her world betray her, in order to get her to do what she does to Lucy. And also to choose to be with Evan, because she’s going to do the safest thing. Everything that she thought she could trust, including her own mom, fails her.”
Of course, people behaving badly makes for great TV, and Tell Me Lies’ success is proof positive that depravity will always be en vogue—if only because it makes us feel a little bit better about ourselves. Because we would never make the kinds of decisions that Bree does in the end. Right?
Is the line between “good” and “bad” really that thin? Says Missal, “I think that that is the point of the show.”
Below, Glamour speaks with Cat Missal about those shocking twists and turns, her favorite late-aughts costumes, and all those hair transformations.
Glamour: When did you find out that Bree was the one who screwed Lucy over, and what was your reaction to that?
Cat Missal: I found out when I got the script, which was the first couple of weeks of shooting. We were getting the scripts as we were going. I found out maybe a month into shooting, and I was like, “Oh my God, a villain arc.” Her actions are kind of justified, but also it’s so wrong and evil and completely destroys Lucy’s life. It was hard.
A lot of the other characters, everybody's like, “They’re terrible people. Everybody’s a terrible person, except for Bree.” Were you excited to also be bad?
Yes, I was. I mean, even though Bree’s a sweet, sweet girl, this season she falls in love with Wrigley while she’s still technically with Evan and he’s with Pippa. It’s like, there’s cheating going on. It was fun to have that kind of spark of evil, but ultimately, it’s just such a sad situation.
When did you learn about the Wrigley arc?
I found out a couple of weeks before we went to go shoot. Meaghan called me and was like, “Hey, just got to let you know.…” Which I was grateful for. I was grateful we didn’t show up to set, and then I was like, “Oh, this is happening.”
Honestly, it made sense pretty much immediately. I was like, “You know what? These two are sweet.” We hadn’t gotten to see Wrigley’s true personality, I feel, underneath, who he truly is to his core, which is just a sweet, sweet person.
How would you rank Bree and Wrigley on the niceness scale compared with the other characters? Do you still think they’re two of the nicer people or good people?
I would hope so. I hope that that’s why their love makes sense because they’re good. Because if they’re not, it’s all just so icky. It’s all just so gross. But the niceness scale—the bar’s pretty low.
That’s true. What were your other conversations with Meaghan about the final season? Bree plays such a huge role in all of the twists; and obviously, we enter with Bree’s wedding to begin with. Did you have to have a deeper conversation about Bree’s arc?
Not really, no. I feel like the way that Meaghan set our characters up for us was really great because it did feel like a lot of collaboration in season one, especially. It’s become more of an ensemble show as the seasons have gone on, but that first season did give us a lot of rein to figure out who these characters were to us.
I think that lent its hand with these last couple seasons in terms of just being actors and approaching the characters. I mean, I’m speaking for myself, really, but approaching the character with my own understanding of who she is and how she got there. It just so happened to work out with…I think that probably does come back to having conversations with Meaghan about what I think and how I feel about Bree. It did feel a bit collaborative, which is really cool.
I’ve seen a lot of these shows in which the finale seems anticlimactic or the big twist doesn’t feel like it’s earned, but this one really did feel satisfying. What were your thoughts on the final scene, when Lucy gets in Stephen’s car and then he leaves her at the gas station?
It kind of makes sense for her in that moment to leave the wedding with him. I mean, I was just saying they’re still sleeping together, which is just so wild. They’re making jabs at each other. They hate each other and are disgusted, yet they’re still sleeping together. So in that moment, when everything blows up, I see how Lucy left with him. I get it. But when he leaves her, it’s just like the game continues.
What do you think is next for Bree? Is she going to run off into the sunset with Wrigley?
I don’t know. She’s got to pick up some pieces before anything good can happen. If she truly wants to face the music, then she’s got to deal with how Evan feels. And he’s really the only one. I think everyone else is pretty much aware [of her affair with Wrigley]. I mean, Lucy wasn’t, but Pippa seems to know about it. I don’t know if Lucy knows or if she has some information. It’s all kind of just up in the air. I hope she finds happiness somewhere.
There are a lot of really emotionally charged scenes, especially for Bree in the final season. Did you have any way of removing yourself after a day of filming and taking care of yourself? How did you unwind?
I watched a lot of nature shows. I would go home and put on David Attenborough and just watch him and listen to him talk about penguins. That was my wind-down. The wind-down was easier than I’ve found it before, because it is so taxing, that stuff. So afterwards you kind of do crash a bit. It’s more so the windup in the morning when you get up and you’re like, “Okay, got to get back to it and have that same energy.” That’s the part that’s tricky for me.
How did you get into the headspace? Did you have a playlist or a hype-up song?
I do have a playlist of the kind of stuff that gets me in that darker headspace. And also, for what it’s worth, which I think is a lot, the scenes that were more emotionally taxing, everyone was just extremely committed. When you show up and the other actors on set have your back and want the scene to go really well, it just helps so much. Then, in between takes, everyone can joke around and not carry that energy through the whole day. The cast is great. It made it really easy.
What was the most played song in your playlist or the one song that kind of feels like it encapsulates all of that energy?
One of the ones that I often would listen to, I don’t know why, it just kind of has this driving beat behind it, is Interpol’s “The New.” It’s really good and of that era.
You were very young in 2008, when the majority of the show is set. How does it feel to go back into that timeline when you were, what, 10 years old in real life?
I have older sisters, and so I definitely grew up with a lot of that early-aughts influence. It was still very much an influence in my life. I learned a lot from them growing up. So I feel like I had an understanding and an idea of sort of what it was like growing up in that time. But it was cool to play. I loved the Blackberries, and I had a little Razor as my phone on set. Just the fashion of it all, I’m really glad that this show takes place in that era.
I wanted to ask you about Bree’s hair transformations. Was that your real hair for all three seasons?
Well, the first season—that was my hair. I had cut it extremely short and it was growing out, and I box-dyed it. It was really insane. I showed up to set and they were like, “Great.” And I was like, “Okay, great.” So that was my hair. They asked me to grow it out for season two, so that was my actual hair as well.
For season three I chopped it, and I knew that they would have a problem with it, so I didn’t tell anyone, which was bad, really bad on my part. I get that. But also, I don’t know, it made sense to me for her [to cut her hair]. I really wanted her to come into this season just completely different. And it helped. It helped a lot.
After her traumatic relationship with Oliver, a big transformation made a lot of sense. Like her version of breakup bangs.
Yeah, exactly. I feel like it really did just that. It also left room for her to reinvent herself, which is what the theme was, or she was trying to conjure up a new version of herself. She’s going to this photography class, too, and she’s experimenting. Then I wore the wigs for the wedding scenes.
Which betrayal do you think was most intense for Bree this season? Between Lucy sleeping with Evan, Evan sabotaging Bree’s mom, or Marianne and Oliver gaslighting Bree, she dealt with a lot of backstabbing.
I think Oliver ultimately is like...he’s just so evil to me. The fact that he does what he does, he fully grooms her. Then he starts doing the same thing to another young girl. She finds out and threatens to get him fired. When Evan tries to come at him, he completely manipulates the situation and is like, “Okay, you’re going to get her back, and this is how you’re going to do it.” It’s just bizarre to me. I’m like, “Whoa. For what, dude?”
That whole situation with Marianne being on his side felt shocking.
This is hard to talk about, but she’s potentially a victim of his as well. You kind of see that as a theme through the show, where someone can treat you like shit, but it doesn’t matter because you have this loyalty, this tie to them, that you just can’t break.
The only ones who seemingly escape the wrath of men in the show are Diana and Pippa, who are in a relationship with each other.
Women loving women.
Do you think that there’s kind of a statement that was being made about men being terrible for—
Oh, for sure. For sure. And Meaghan could say it better, but yeah.
Meaghan’s husband in real life is Tom, who plays Oliver. I’m curious what the dynamic was like between the three of you when you were filming Oliver and Bree’s scenes.
We never really talked about it. It was kind of all left up for interpretation, which is why I say it was a lot of our own ideas being brought into it, which I think actually helped the situation
I would’ve assumed that there would’ve been some kind of upfront conversation.
I think it just depends on the project. I’m still pretty green. This is my first big thing. This is my first series regular on a show, and I’ve been learning a lot through the process, but I do think it just depends on the project. You have some people, some writers and directors who want to be really involved in your kind of conjuring up of the character. And then a lot of times, you’re left to your own devices. That’s how at least it felt to me for this show, which is cool because you feel so connected. I feel extremely connected to Bree.
What’s next for you?
I don’t know what’s next. I hope another job.
Lauren Conrad, Britney Spears, and Avril Lavigne were on the mood board for Lucy.
