Interview: "Tell Me Lies" Season 3 Cast on Accountability, Intimacy, and the Cost of Avoidance

When Tell Me Lies returns for its third season, the students of Baird College are back for spring semester and telling themselves that this time, things will be different. Lucy and Stephen have rekindled their volatile relationship, old secrets refuse to stay buried, and the ripple effects of last year’s scandals force everyone in their orbit to confront choices they’d rather avoid. But as Season 3 unfolds, the series isn’t interested in neat resolutions or sudden growth. Instead, it zeroes in on something far messier: what happens when people live next to the truth without ever fully facing it.

In paired interviews with Branden Cook (Evan) and Spencer House (Wrigley), and Sonia Mena (Pippa) and Alicia Crowder (Diana), the cast opened up about a season defined by emotional proximity without honesty — whether that plays out through male friendship, romantic intimacy, or the quiet tension of self-discovery.

Evan & Wrigley: Grief, Guilt, and the Things Men Don’t Say

Season 2 ended with Evan finally confessing to Stephen about Lucy, a moment that should have brought relief, but instead leaves Evan spiraling when Season 3 begins. “I think Evan is very mentally unsure of what’s going on and how he’s going to proceed,” Cook explained. “Stephen says he won’t use it against him… but I don’t know if Evan’s quite sure about that.”

For Wrigley, the emotional terrain is even more fractured. Still reeling from Drew’s death, House describes his character as standing at a crossroads. “That’s something that completely breaks you,” he said. “So he will either rise or fall from there.”

While Evan and Wrigley often find it easier to talk to each other than to Stephen, that bond is built on selective honesty. Cook notes that Evan confides in Wrigley in ways he doesn’t with Stephen, yet both actors agree that the trajectory of the friendship isn’t toward healing. “I definitely think the end goal is further apart,” Cook said, with House backing him up.

That emotional distance is no accident. Asked about accountability, a recurring theme across the series, House was blunt. “Across the board, there’s very little accountability for everyone in the show,” he said. “And if there was a lot of accountability taken… I don’t think you’d have much of a show.”

Cook agreed, adding that accountability isn’t exactly entertaining. Characters are sometimes forced to confront their actions, but true reckoning is rare, and often avoided altogether.

Even when prompted to imagine Evan and Wrigley being brutally honest with each other, both actors shut the question down immediately. It’s the one truth Season 3 refuses to hand over easily — and that silence says everything.

Pippa & Diana: Intimacy Without Chaos

In contrast to the show’s louder, more combustible relationships, Pippa and Diana’s story unfolds quietly and deliberately. Season 3 explores how the two women became a couple, revealing a dynamic shaped less by spectacle and more by trust, hesitation, and differing levels of self-awareness. Crowder admits she was surprised by how long it takes Diana to recognize what she’s feeling. “She’s kind of oblivious at first,” she said. “Trying to figure out that the feelings she’s having are romantic ones.”

From Pippa’s perspective, Diana’s confidence is both magnetic and maddening. “She’s not afraid to make a decision that makes her unliked,” Mena explained. “That really drives Pippa insane, but it’s also extremely cool and attractive.”

Diana, meanwhile, sees something grounding in Pippa. Crowder describes her as “a beacon of safety,” someone straightforward and deeply invested in her relationships, even when it means putting others before herself.

That balance — power without cruelty, vulnerability without melodrama — is what makes their relationship stand out in the Tell Me Lies universe. While many romances on the show thrive on chaos, Pippa and Diana’s grows through restraint.

Behind the scenes, that ease comes from years of familiarity. Though they’d shared few scenes in earlier seasons, Mena and Crowder leaned into their real-life friendship when Season 3 finally gave them space to explore the relationship fully. “We didn’t have to play at chemistry,” Mena said. “We already trusted each other.”

Just as important was resisting the urge to present their story as a perfect love narrative. For Mena, specificity was key. “I never want to be a token anything,” she said, emphasizing the importance of showing why the relationship might not work as much as why it does.

Crowder added that their differing experiences with queerness were essential to that realism. Pippa enters the relationship with more self-knowledge, while Diana is discovering herself in real time, a dynamic that mirrors how many people navigate identity without a roadmap.

A Season About Avoidance

Taken together, both pairings reveal the emotional thesis of Tell Me Lies Season 3. Whether it’s Evan and Wrigley avoiding hard truths through silence, or Pippa and Diana carefully circling desire and self-definition, the season isn’t about redemption, it’s about endurance.

These characters are close to the truth. They feel it. They sense it. But acting on it is another matter entirely.

Season three of Tell Me Lies premieres Tuesday, January 13th, on Hulu, with new episodes releasing weekly, giving viewers plenty of time to sit with the tension, the intimacy, and the lies the characters keep telling themselves.