Latest news with #EstherMcGregor
South China Morning Post
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Who is Shubham Maheshwari, who plays Gat on We Were Liars? He's a Hollywood newcomer with no previous screen experience – but as a teenager, he was inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio
Shubham Maheshwari stands out like a sore thumb on the fictional Beechwood Island where Amazon Prime Video's latest drama series, We Were Liars, takes place. Adapted from author E. Lockhart's book of the same name, We Were Liars centres on Cadence Sinclair ( Emily Alyn Lind ), the daughter of a wealthy family who suffered a terrible head injury. Shubham Maheshwari (left) with his We Were Liars co-stars Esther McGregor (in yellow), Joseph Zada and Emily Alyn Lind. Photo: @shubham/Instagram Holidaying on her family's private island, Cadence tries to regain her memory with the help of her two older cousins ( Esther McGregor and Joseph Zada ) and their friend, Gat Patil, played by Maheshwari. Unlike his ultra wealthy, ultra blonde friends, Maheshwari's character is of Indian descent and was raised in New York in a working-class family; these differences play a role in Gat's relationship with the Sinclairs. Advertisement Shubham Maheshwari plays Gat Patil in We Were Liars. Photo: @primevideo/Instagram But what do we know about Shubham Maheshwari, the actor behind We Were Liars' Gat Patil? He had no professional acting experience Shubham Maheshwari was studying economics when he applied for the We Were Liars role. Photo: @shubham/Instagram Born and raised in Dubai to Indian immigrant parents, Maheshwari had never set foot on a film set, had no screen credits to his name, and had no agent before landing his breakout role as Gat Patil on We Were Liars. Unlike his three co-stars, he also had no connection to the industry – Emily Alyn Lind, Esther McGregor and Joseph Zada all have parents in showbiz. Maheshwari was a university student studying economics when he came across an open casting call on Backstage, the 'LinkedIn' for models and actors, for the role of Gat Patil. 'Reading their brief character description of Gat, I immediately knew this was something I would apply for, but that was about it – I did not think or expect anything,' Maheshwari said in an interview with Backstage. 'I then immediately read the book and fell in love with this incredible story.'
South China Morning Post
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Who is Esther McGregor, aka Mirren in We Were Liars? The daughter of Star Wars actor Ewan McGregor is a young powerhouse who's already modelled for Miu Miu, opened a tattoo parlour and been in a band
At just 23 years old, Ewan McGregor's daughter Esther is already an actress, a model, a tattoo artist and a fashion designer. Esther McGregor (left) stars in Amazon Prime's We Were Liars. Photo: @ McGregor takes on her first co-starring role in Prime Video's latest series, We Were Liars. The show premiered on June 18 and is already creating buzz for a second season. Based on a novel of the same name by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars centres around a woman who hails from a wealthy family, Cadence Sinclair (played by Emily Alyn Lind), who is suffering from memory loss after a head injury and is trying to piece her life back together with the help of her friends. Advertisement Esther McGregor at a Vanity Fair event in March. Photo: @ Despite having already rubbed shoulders with megastars Nicole Kidman and Tilda Swinton on two other big projects in the past year – Baby Girl and The Room Next Door – McGregor told Elle she was truly thrilled to play her character Mirren on We Were Liars. 'She's one of the first characters I've played who has this bounciness of youth. Her youth is very energetic,' she explained. Here's everything else you need to know about Esther McGregor. Esther McGregor grew up in a family of performers Esther McGregor's parents are both in the film industry. Photo: @ Born in October 2001, Esther McGregor's father is Scottish actor Ewan McGregor – best known for his roles in Star Wars , Moulin Rouge and Trainspotting – while her mother, Eve Mavrakis, is a production designer. Her older sister Clara is also a model and actress. 'I want to give the gratitude that I think deserves its place, in terms of being raised in a family in film,' Esther told Elle in May. 'Being able to be on sets really aided that love and that breath and that heartbeat. As much as I don't think I would be able to do anything else, who knows? It was the way that I was born, the world I was born into. So I feel very thankful that I'm able to do what I do, because I need it.' She is a tattoo artist Esther McGregor says she was born to be an actress. Photo: @
Forbes
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Why Does Cadence From ‘We Were Liars' Look So Familiar?
Emily Alyn Lind in "We Were Liars." The new Prime Video series We Were Liars stars Emily Alyn Lind in the lead role as Cadence 'Cady' Sinclair Eastman. What else has Lind starred in? All eight episodes of We Were Liars debuted on June 18 on the Amazon Prime streaming service. The official summary for the series reads, 'Based on the best-selling novel by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars, the series follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her tight-knit inner circle, nicknamed the Liars, during their summer escapades on her grandfather's New England private island. 'The Sinclairs are American royalty — known for their good looks, old money, and enviable bond — but after a mysterious accident changes Cadence's life forever, everyone, including her beloved Liars, seems to have something to hide.' We Were Liars also stars Shubham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada, Caitlin FitzGerald, Mamie Gummer, Candice King, Rahul Kohli and David Morse. Lind's screen career kicked off in 2008 when she starred as one of the younger versions of Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) in coming-of-age drama The Secret Life of Bees. From there, Lind appeared in a slate of guest roles on such series as NBC's Medium and CBS' Criminal Minds, and had a recurring role a Emily Gardner on the ABC fantasy drama Eastwick from 2009 to 2010, and appeared in a recurring capacity as Emma Lavery on the daytime drama All My Children in 2010. In addition, Lind played the young version of Amanda Clarke (Emily VanCamp) in a recurring role on the ABC mystery thriller Revenge from 2011-2015, and the recurring role of Ariel on the CBS medical drama Code Black from 2015-2018. On film, Lind starred in director Gaspar Noé's psychological drama Enter the Void in 2009 and played the young version of Hollywood icon Shirley Temple in the Clint Eastwood-directed 2011 biopic J. Edgar, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover. Lind's other film roles include the 2013 supernatural horror movie The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia and the 2016 horror thriller Lights Out. Lind has appeared in many other high-profile projects, which are detailed below, explaining why she looks so familiar. 'Doctor Sleep' (2019) Emily Alyn Lind stars as Snakebite Andi in the supernatural horror film Doctor Sleep, a sequel to Stephen King's The Shining directed by Mike Flanagan. Ewan McGregor stars as Danny Lloyd, the grown-up version of the boy with the psychic powers in The Shining. Rebecca Ferguson also stars as Rose the Hat, the mystical leader of the True Knot cult in Doctor Sleep, while Lind's Snakebite Andi is a younger member of the nefarious group. Judah Lewis and Emily Alyn Lind in "The Babysitter Killer Queen." 'The Babysitter' (2017) And 'The Babysitter: Killer Queen' (2020) Emily Alyn Lind plays the Melanie, the best friend and neighbor of Cole (Judah Lewis) in the 2017 Netflix horror comedy The Babysitter, and reprises her role in the 2020 sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen. In The Babysitter, Cole's parents hire a babysitter for the-then 12-year-old, and it turns out the babysitter, Bee (Samara Weaving) leads a cult of devil worshippers. In The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Cole's troubles spill over into high school — where even Melanie turns against him. Emily Alyn Lind in "Gossip Girl." 'Gossip Girl' (2021-2023) Emily Alyn Lind starred as Audrey Hope in Gossip Girl, one of a group of private school teens in New York City who spread gossip over social media. Gossip Girl is based on The CW's hit series of the same name starring Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley and Chace Crawford, which ran from 2007-2012. Emily Alyn Lind in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire." 'Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire' (2024) Emily Alyn Lind appeared only in spectral form in the action comedy Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as the 'Ghost Girl' Melody who befriends and shares a complex emotional connection with 15-year-old Ghostbuster Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace). Unlike other ghosts in the Ghostbusters franchise, Melody is a friendly ghost (or at least appears to be) that means to do no harm to her human counterparts. All eight episodes of We Were Liars, starring Emily Alyn Lind, are streaming on Prime Video.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'We Were Liars': Esther McGregor breaks down 'bravest' and 'difficult' scenes with Candice King, Emily Alyn Lind
The most popular show on Prime Video, We Were Liars, is bringing fans to tears with it's devastating and shocking finale. Starring Emily Alyn Lind, Mamie Gummer, Caitlin FitzGerald, Candice King, David Morse, Shubham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada and Rahul Kohli, the captivating drama has audiences hooked. 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."
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'We Were Liars': Esther McGregor breaks down 'bravest' and 'difficult' scenes with Candice King, Emily Alyn Lind
The most popular show on Prime Video, We Were Liars, is bringing fans to tears with it's devastating and shocking finale. Starring Emily Alyn Lind, Mamie Gummer, Caitlin FitzGerald, Candice King, David Morse, Shubham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada and Rahul Kohli, the captivating drama has audiences hooked. 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."
