'We Were Liars': Esther McGregor breaks down 'bravest' and 'difficult' scenes with Candice King, Emily Alyn Lind
We Were Liars really leans into its most emotional moments, with the cast really taking on every twist, turn and wounding moment with conviction. One of those moments that really stands out is between Mirren (Esther McGregor) and her mother Bess (Candice King), after Bess finds out her daughter saw her affair with "Salty Dan," a harbour service worker, and shared that information with The Liars.
Specifically, Bess is angry her sister Penny (Caitlin Fitzgerald) has that information and is holding it over her head, preventing her from getting more money from her father to reconcile her debt.
In Episode 5 Bess confronts Mirren, destroying all of Mirren's beautiful art.
"You are not an artist. You are a dilettante and you're a child," Bess says.
"I'm your child," Esther says in response. "I didn't ask for you to waste your life on me. And neither did the twins. You chose to be a mother. ... It's not our fault that you decided to hate it."
"It was written very well, first of all, so it was easy to kind of get there," McGregor told Yahoo Canada. "I think that it is a lot of people's narratives to kind of feel shut out as a kid, especially if you've got a young mother, or whatever it is."
"I've not necessarily [had that] with my mother, but I've dealt with similar stuff in terms of ... not feeling like I have a place. And I think the courage it takes to say that is really big. ... When she hurts me, ... she hurts my art, and she hurts my art that I made because I was so happy with The Liars, and that was my safe place. And when that fractures, that's big enough to break me. I think Mirren tries to keep it together quite a lot, especially towards her mother. So that was something really interesting ... and I think it's one of her bravest moments in the series. So it's lovely to find that, but really heartbreaking too."
By the time we get to the last episode, we see a particularly close bond between Mirren and her cousin Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind), who's spent the season trying to figure out the circumstances of her injury during the summer of her 16th birthday.
The conversation in Episode 8 starts with Mirren telling Cadence she wishes she had been kinder to The Littles, but Cadence says Mirren shouldn't have regret, she should be "light as air." Then Mirren starts talking about how she always wanted to be "excellent" at everything, that both she, and her mother, never let themselves me "messy."
"I don't think anyone really saw me," Mirren says to Cadence as she starts sobbing. "And now no one ever will."
"No, look at me," Cadence says in response. "The Liars saw you Mirren. And I'll see you for the rest of my life."
"That moment, that's a difficult one," McGregor said. "It was interesting because that one was I think in the last week of us filming, I think we had like a few days left, so that goodbye felt very real and present."
"She was such a guiding light for me, quite motherly towards me, which is really what I needed. Like even if I had my stomach ache, she would set me up with some saltine crackers and my medication. Emily's a very thoughtful person that's very attentive, and I think that definitely blended into our characters and our togetherness."
But one satisfying part of the We Were Liars Season 1 ending is that Ed (Rahul Kohli) gets back together with Carrie (Mamie Gummer), after previously leaving following Ed's failed proposal.
While Ed and Gat's (Shubham Maheshwari) bond as outsiders to the Sinclairs was compelling to watch, it was also interesting to see how Ed is so important to Carrie's kids, Johnny (Joseph Zada) and Will (Brady Droulis), but is still on the outside of the larger Sinclair family.
"That dynamic, it's super relatable," Kohli said. "It's not too dissimilar to my current living circumstances."
"I am obviously British born and I live in America, I've been there for 10 years, and some of the people I call my family I still, even at Thanksgiving or across the table, still don't feel 100 per cent a part of that. It's just something that comes with being a fish out of water."
But in order for We Were Liars to bring the audience through the peaks and valleys in this thrilling story, the show needed directors who could take on the task. In this case, all five directors, Nzingha Stewart, Julie Plec, Tara Miele, So Yong Kim and Erica Dunton, brilliantly crafted their elements of this intertwining story.
"[Nzingha Stewart], who did the very first episode, she set the tone," David Morse, who plays Sinclair family patriarch Harris, said.
"She's really excellent with actors and taking time with us as we're discovering things. Especially in that first episode you feel so naked the first time you open your mouth as a character on that first day, and you'd like to know there's somebody there who's there to protect you and help you a little bit. And Nzingha was great with that. ... Towards the end, we had a really terrific director for those really challenging last two episodes. ... And I think we had the right directors at the right time."
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