Warning: MAJOR spoilers for the ending ofWe Were Liars!Prime Video’sWe Were Liarsexplores themes of taking responsibility for your actions, which can be hard to do if you truly do not know what you did wrong. The series follows Cadence Sinclair as she struggles with memory loss after a terrible accident. Her family and friends refuse to explain to her what happened, but eventually she puts the pieces together herself, resulting in an emotional season 1 finale.
The series is based on the bookWe Were Liarsby author E. Lockhart, and whilesome changes were made for the screen adaptation, the story as a whole remains similar. In the end, Cadence discovers that the liars (the pet name for her cousins and their family friend) are the ones who burned the family home to the ground, and that she was the sole survivor. Thus, it is revealed that Gat, Mirran, and Johnny have not been with her all summer long, but rather they have been ghosts manifested by her grief and trauma to help her through this rough time.
ScreenRantspoke withEmily Alyn Lind, Shubham Maheshwari (Gat), Joseph Zada (Johnny Sinclair), Esther McGregor (Mirran Sinclair), David Morse (Harris Sinclair),Rahul Kohli(Ed), Candice King (Bess), Caitlin FitzGerald (Penny), and Mamie Gummer (Carrie) to break down the extremely devastating finale episode. The cast also revealed what it was like to film those final moments on set, with somoene even admitting they needed to stop to take a break.
The Liars Were Devastated To Find Out Their Fate In The Finale
“Even Towards The Bitter End Of It, We Were Just Like, ‘I Wish The Ending Could Change’”
When asked what their reactions were when they first discovered the ending of the story, everyone admits to being shocked, as well as having a difficult time with it. “I cried,” Lind admitted. “But I also was just in utter shock. It’s rare. I didn’t expect that this book was going to shock me in this way.” Maheshwari added that “you don’t think it’s going to go in that direction.”
“No, not at all,” Lind continues. “And so that’s why I was like, ‘Okay, great. Surprise me. I love this. This is great.'” She went on to say, “Even towards the bitter end of it, we were just like, I wish the ending could change. We really wanted it to, but there’s something so great and something I really love, like, this is what I love in filmmaking. There are so many times where you really take a leap of faith, and you trust your gut, and you kill your character off in the first 10 minutes of the movie. And I’m like, great filmmaking.You kill all of your characters off at the end of season 1, or all your characters off at the end of a book, and you are not giving yourself a crutch to fall into.”
It’s about shocking people. It’s about people making them feel different and challenging your viewers.
“It’s about the art. It’s about shocking people. It’s about people making them feel different and challenging your viewers,” Lind expressed. “So I think that that’s what’s really interesting, even though it really does suck. And I really wish [they] weren’t dead.” McGregor simply added, “It was bleak. It definitely wasn’t the most happy feeling.”
“It was really bleak,” Zada laughed. “It was also scary because then you have to try and… how do you keep that secret through the show without giving it away? And how does that work? And how are your characters different? There was so much to go over.” He adds, “Reading the book for the first time was very, very hard, especially when you’re imagining yourself as the character. As you’re reading it, and then going, Oh, my God, I’m dead.”
Filming Those Final Moments Was Especially Hard Because It Was The End Of The Shoot
“It’s The First Time That Your Characters Confront The Issue And Actually Speak About What Happened To Them”
When talking about filming the goodbye scenes that the Liars have with Cadence, McGregor admitted she was a wreck. “It feels like the real goodbye, you know. It was terrible. I found it difficult. I found that I had to really almost rein in the amount that I was feeling because there was still this beautiful aspect of being at peace at that point. But I had to remember because I was so distraught over the whole thing,” she recalled. “But also, it was a lot because it was the last week and everything. It was just more difficult. It wasn’t an easy one to film.”
Zada talked about why it was such a difficult scene for him to film as well. “It’s the first time that your characters confront the issue and actually speak about what happened to them. And I think also, that coupled with the fact that we’re in our last week of filming when we’re doing all those things. So it’s actually the last one-on-one scenes we had.”
It Is Important To Get Scenes Like This Right, But That Doesn’t Make It Any Easier
“I didn’t read the book till after I was cast and then read it and was like,‘Oh, Oh no. Oh my God.’ And by then it was too late to get off the ride.” FitzGerald joked. “Even with knowing it - in the read-through of the final episode, we all obviously knew what was coming. We’ve all read the book, talked about it all summer, and all of us were bawling. We were an absolute mess.”
“David had to say, ‘Could we stop for a minute so I can collect myself before we continue?'” King remembered. “And we weren’t being dramatic actors.”
When asked about that moment where he needed to collect himself, Morse admitted that “it’s kind of crazy. Even if you know it’s coming, part of what the book has meant to people is this twist that just breaks your heart. Even if I know that, seeing it actually, when we get to watch it, it just killed me. It slayed me.”
He went on to talk about the importance of getting things right when filming such meaningful moments. “I thought they were all fantastic in the way they pulled it off. There’s a lot of pressure when you get to those scenes because you really want to pull it off. I mean, you want to pull everything off, obviously, and you don’t want it to become too precious. That’s not helpful.You want it to be true to the characters, true to the story, but you may feel that sentimental stuff working its way in cause you’re not going to see each other.”
“It was told to me when I was pitched the show, and I think my first reaction was, ‘Oh, I’m in another ghost show.'” Kohli laughed. “I thought we were doing something different. It was both exciting and also totally in my wheelhouse and belongs alongside all the other things that I’ve done in the past that I’m very proud of.”
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All episodes ofWe Were Liarsare now available to stream on Prime Video.
We Were Liars
Cast
We Were Liars follows 17-year-old Cadence as she returns to Beechwood Island, seeking answers about a mysterious accident that left her with amnesia. The series explores her journey amid the private summer gathering of the Sinclair family, where secrets are guarded by friends and past love.
