‘We Were Liars’ Star Emily Alyn Lind on That Shocking Finale Twist and What Could Come Next

[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for We Were Liars.]

The Prime Video series We Were Liars, based on the best-selling novel by E. Lockhart, follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman (Emily Alyn Lind) and her closest friends Johnny Sinclair Dennis (Joseph Zada) and Mirren Sinclair Sheffield (Esther McGregor), along with her first love Gat Patil (Shubham Maheshwari), better known as the Liars. Their escapades on Harris Sinclair’s (David Morse) private island in New England have always been memorable, until a mysterious accident leaves 17-year-old Cadence searching for answers that keep slipping through her fingers as she deals with a traumatic brain injury that’s left her with amnesia. As she gets closer to solving the mixed-up puzzle of her brain, dark family secrets threaten to tear them all apart.

From showrunners Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie, Cadence’s story is told in two timelines, the summer when she was 16 and her fairy tale life shattered with her memory when she was found alone on the beach with no idea of how she got there, and then a year after her mysterious accident left her confused and lonely when the Liars didn’t come to visit her and won’t discuss what happened. As she spends time on the island, little bits of memory are triggered but the full extent always seems just out of reach, until she convinces Johnny, Mirren and Gat to help her with the final pieces that will devastate them all.

Collider got the opportunity to chat with Lind about all things We Were Liars, delving deep into what appealed to her about the series, who Cadence is, and the emotional roller coaster of the story. During the interview, she talked about how helpful it was to have so many details before shooting, stitching the different versions of Cadence back together, finding the chemistry between the Liars, how different life can be with privilege, that emotional moment when Cadence breaks down on the beach after finally getting all her memories back, Cadence’s realization of what it means to be a Sinclair, that shocking final moment between Johnny and his mother Carrie (Mamie Gummer) and how Johnny motives might not be as pure as the others, and what a possible Season 2 could look like.

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Collider: When this came your way, how much did you know about the story and the characters? Did they tell you the secrets? Did you read the book to discover the secrets yourself? How much did you actually know?

EMILY ALYN LIND: I knew everything because I had so much time in between auditioning and them deciding, “She’s going to be okay. She’ll do this.” There was a writers’ strike in between, and I was filming a movie in London. So, I read the pilot. I’m a pretty avid reader. I don’t read a lot of YA, but I was very interested in where this went, and I was very surprised by that and embarrassed. I was like, “This is a great book. I love it.” And then, I auditioned for it. I put it on tape, but I didn’t think that anything would happen. I don’t know why. Sometimes I just think of myself differently. I think we all do. I am blonde, but I imagined her just being this model. What was really interesting to me is that I got to play two different people in one. But I knew everything about it. I had read the prequel by the time I was filming. I did way too much homework, which was great. Usually, you have to make that stuff up yourself, but I had an entire book of this girl’s mind and how she sees the world. That was helpful, for sure.

The Non-Linear Storytelling and Unreliable Narrator of ‘We Were Liars’ Keeps the Audience Guessing About the Mystery

“We all feel gaslit when we watch this show.”

You mentioned playing two different people in one character, but in a way, it almost feels like three characters. There’s the version of Cadence before everything that happened, the version of her that can’t remember anything, and then the version that’s stitched back together once she has her memories again. Did it feel that way to you?

LIND: Yeah, I do agree with you. When you think about it, she’s an unreliable narrator. We all feel gaslit when we watch this show. I wish so badly that I could watch it without knowing anything, but I can’t and that sucks. I love to hear when people say that they were surprised by the ending. It’s really exciting. The closest thing I can get to that is the first time I read the book. I was like, ‘This chick has balls. I am obsessed with her. Emily Lockhart is crazy in the best way possible. This is something that’s going to be really cool because they’re going for it.” That’s all that I could ask for.

I feel like it was definitely three different characters. You explained it perfectly. You have the Summer 16 Cadence who experienced this tragic accident and now has amnesia. She’s this amnesiac drug addict who’s this extremely vulnerable and also hard version of herself that comes with feeling the betrayal of everyone she loves and the pain of what an accident like that might inflict. And then, you have this memory that is always wavering and fleeting and changing, and we’re going down this rabbit hole, trying to catch pieces. We see the series pan out like that, in almost these big nets of beauty, and then horror and confusion and uncertainty. It’s interesting. I love non-linear storytelling. I’ve tried it myself. It’s a really hard thing to do, but so satisfying if you get it right.

Obviously, there are other characters that are important to the story, but at the core of this really is the Liars, which is this group of four friends. When did you guys first meet? Was the chemistry instant, or did it take some time to find?

LIND: They were such sweethearts and such pros. I’m really young. I’m 23 years old, but I’ve been doing this for 18 years. I’ve been doing it since I was five. I’ve done many projects where I’ve worked with young people, and not to sound condescending whatsoever, but there are some people who have it and some people who don’t. I’ve been doing this for so long that I know I want to be here. I know the ropes. I care and am still excited every day that I go to work and play a new character, or write a new character, or be a part of this world in general. At the same time, there are some people who are just stepping in for the first time, figuring out if this is really what they want to do. When they do it, they’re like, “Oh, this is actually harder than I thought. We’re waking up at 4 am, we don’t have breaks, we have to memorize all this stuff, we can’t go out, we can’t be hung over, we can’t do any of these things.”

When you’re young, that’s hard because you’re young. None of these kids on this show were like that. They were all so passionate, and they were all so new. With Shubham [Maheshwari], it was his first project. Joe [Zada] is going on to do all these massive things, which is so exciting to see for him, but it was his first American project. I think it was Esther [McGregor]’s first television show. Shumbham was either in Dubai or Canada, and he signed up for a casting call on Backstage, and it just happened to go his way. He really took that seriously. He would come over to my house every night, and we wouldn’t go out, we’d study our lines and our characters. It was beautiful. I think it’s really great, working with my peers who care about what they’re doing.

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If you stay open and in the moment, you can find the scene together.

LIND: There’s nothing wrong with not knowing what’s happening, as long as you keep a good attitude because you’re fucking lucky to be there. If you get your lines wrong, you’ve got a director that can help you with that or castmates. You really have to just show the fuck up. You can succeed if you get the chance. And don’t be late. That’s it. I picked Shubham up in the car. We were going to rehearsal at a director’s house before we started production, and I just wanted to have some alone time with him because I knew it must have been such a whirlwind for him, coming in and not knowing anything. I was like, “This is so perfect,” because not only do we need this chemistry ASAP and we’ve never met, but I want him to know that I have his back. I was a child actor. I know this. I know the ropes. I know how people should be treated. I know you need to stand up for yourself or other people will take advantage of you. And so, I just said, “I’ve got you. You’re my everything. This will be so great. Any question you have, just whisper it in my ear. No one will know that you don’t know anything.” To be honest, he just picked up on it so fast that he didn’t need much help. It was really beautiful to see his creativity unfold.

‘We Were Liars’ Star Emily Alyn Lind Explains that Privilege Doesn’t End With Just One Act of Rebellion

“I don’t believe people change overnight.”

There’s such an interesting family dynamic in this because it feels like the children put up with their father in a way that the grandchildren are less willing to put up with their grandfather. The generation that your character is a part of really thinks that they’re different from the generations before them, but are they? Do you think that they might have let themselves be influenced in the way that Penny (Caitlin FitzGerlad), Carrie (Mamie Gummer) and Bess (Candice King) were, over the years?

LIND: Yes. We live in a world right now of a lot of performative shit. There are so many people pretending that they’re not privileged. I got started in this industry with the help of my parents. I got started in this industry watching my mother (Barbara Alyn Woods) on set. My mom might not be Angelina Jolie, but she was successful and she knew the ropes. It’s not about that. She said, “It’s okay. I’m going to accept you to do this thing that’s so wild. I’m also going to protect you. I know all of this stuff. The world is your oyster if you love this.” That’s privilege in this industry that someone like Shubham did not have. We are really obsessed with proving to everyone these days that we are not privileged and that we have to work just as hard. I’m not saying that I didn’t work fucking hard and go to every commercial audition, but I had a driver, my mom, who drove me to every commercial audition. She drove me to every voiceover audition. She held me when I cried and didn’t say, “Go back to school.”

There was a part of me that thought about Cadence. I’ve never experienced this Murdoch style of wealth. I’ve never really seen it or had any friends that were like this. David [Morse] had a friend that was like this and helped us understand. All I’d seen was Succession, so I went off of that. I’ve seen a lot of privilege in life, but not this old-money privilege. There was a fine line between not making it so that I hated myself and my character. It was more about understanding that she’s compartmentalizing the fact that all of this stuff that Gat talks about, all of this real-world shit, is not true. In her brain, for so long, he’s let her believe that it is all a fairy tale and that it is all okay and that it doesn’t affect other people. That’s a privilege. To be able to make a decision without thinking of others and without thinking about how that might hurt them is a very privileged thing. I don’t believe people change overnight. They’ll always be privileged. They were born that way. They were conditioned that way. They’re better than their fellow mothers. They’ll never learn.

Well, maybe they will after everything. Maybe it takes that much, or maybe it doesn’t change after that. Maybe that’s a metaphor for what really is the true catalyst of wealth in this world. Maybe you can lose everything and still believe that money can fix it all. Maybe you can have two islands in your kitchen and still be crying over your broken earring. Maybe it’s all so toxic and awful that it never ends. The cycle is pretty fucking awful. Sometimes it’s fun to watch them fail, but sometimes it’s not. When Cadence leaves, she’s taking one step, but it’s not the only step she has to take to get any substance in her life. I don’t know if that story of the white girl getting woke and understanding that life is hard in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan is a story that anyone wants to watch anymore. I don’t know if that’s the story I want to tell or if that’s interesting at all. I mean, we get it. But at the same time, I think we did a good job. It was a fun experience to be able to do something that, on the page, with a little bit of an eyebrow raise. Yes, these people exist. Yes, they talk like this. Yes, they say these words. A lot of us experience that at Thanksgiving dinner. We’re just going to show it and it’s going to be real. If you erase the bad, you’re also erasing the good.

The moment when Cadence breaks down on the beach in the finale because she finally remembers everything and realizes that she’s actually alone is so heartbreaking. How was it to experience that?

LIND: That day was the only day that I said to the crew, who I loved dearly and who is brilliant, “Today is the day that I can’t really goof off. I’m not going to be fun between takes.” And they were so accommodating with that because they had been on this journey too. We did the moment with the Liars, and we did the moment when the Liars are gone, and right when that was happening, the tide was coming up. Everything was getting too dark. The cameras weren’t set up. It was just everything, one after the other. One thing had taken too long, and when you’re filming outside in these locations, Mother Nature has its thoughts on what you’re going to be doing and when you’re going to be doing it. I had already filmed the realization, and I was like, “No!” Our amazing director at the time was just like, “Fuck it, let’s do it.”

And so, they turned the drone on and they got the cameras set up wherever they were. I sat there on the beach, and I screamed so loud that it was heard, seven miles down the road. It was pretty intense. I didn’t know what else to do, but just actually think about what that would be like, and it felt like that. It was traumatizing in the best way. I don’t really bring work home with me, to be honest. This book stayed with me. I think about stories, all the time, that have changed my life, whether they’re in books, in poems, or in movies, but I don’t take it home with me. I learned how to do that quite early on. I would have so much baggage. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot about other people. What I bring home with me is the experience, but not the tragedy part. I can’t do that.

1:02:33

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The scene in the finale, when Cadence sits down with her grandfather and tells him she doesn’t want to be the heir, and then he says some really horrible, harsh things to her. What was that moment like to shoot? Do you feel like he thinks that she should just be grateful for the fact that he’s rewritten her story in this way, without even asking her about it?

LIND: I just felt like I was watching David Morse act his ass off. I was having a really hard time not just going, “I love you so much.” David Morse is one of my favorite actors of all time. That was a moment in which he hasn’t really said that to his grandchildren. He hasn’t acted like that with them. He’s been seen as granddad, who you can piss off, but it will be okay. Behind closed doors, they don’t know what it’s like because they’ve just been kids. They know it’s bad, and they know it’s getting worse. She’s realizing these things about him that are just awful, that she probably should’ve realized sooner, but you don’t really want to because it’s your granddad. There are also these other memories. It’s quite manipulative. “I want to love you. We want to love you. We know you did this bad thing, but let me try to make something up in my head that still grounds me to loving you. If I don’t, then what does that say about who I am when I’m a piece of you.” It’s a really complicated thing that some of us deal with in our lives.

When he says that to Cadence and he gives her the ultimatum, he’s basically saying that love is not the problem. “My love is not unconditional. My love is unconditional to an extent, until you want to leave the family name behind. You are a name. This is your name.” He still lives in a world where a last name is everything. You are a legacy. You are going to stay like a good dog, or you’re going to go and you’re going to regret it. This threat from him, her love for her friends, and her love for Gat, and what she knows that maybe she had done in the wrong way by doing what they did, it was to show him and to show them that they are a troubled family, that this is not okay, and that all of it needs to change. That being said, that is not what happened, but she is trying to do that. She’s saying, “The only thing more important to me than myself is the memory of the people I love so much and what they can’t do anymore because they’re dead.” She has to try to not be a part of the problem anymore. That’s powerful. There’s nothing more powerful. She’s giving that up, so what does that mean? How far will he go? I believe that she thinks he’ll go all the way. There are a lot of secrets about Harris Sinclair, and she’s realizing that when she drives away on the boat.

That alone was an interesting moment that you could have left the season on. But the moment at the end, when it’s revealed to us that Carrie could see and talk to Johnny, and then he says to her that he doesn’t think he can leave, made it feel like there are just so many unanswered questions at the end of the season.

LIND: It’s TV. They had to. I found that very interesting too. The cool thing about having a prequel, and I know people don’t like to read anymore, is that it does answer a lot of these questions. You will have something to sustain you. There are little Easter eggs in this show that you can look out for. There are these little moments where you can see that Carrie is talking to Johnny, and usually it comes from substance abuse. Cadence is constantly popping pills, which is usually when she sees her ghost friends. Carrie is a recovering alcoholic, and when she chugs some wine and takes a pill at the end, she sees Johnny. I don’t know if Johnny is a positive ghost like the others. Johnny might have some plans up his sleeve that aren’t as honest and true as Gat and Mirren’s. There might be a reason for him staying on this island. We’ll see. I don’t know.

Emily Alyn Lind Believes Anything is Possible When It Comes to Future Seasons of ‘We Were Liars’

“Maybe we’ll all come back.”

I’m curious about how future seasons will work because there is a prequel, but I also want to see more from the Liars.

LIND: It will be really interesting to see how fans react to it. We’re not going away right now to shoot Season 2, but we could be. It just depends. We’re in the hands of the viewers and the studio, and our wonderful writers and where they want to go with it. I don’t think anything is impossible. Our writers and showrunners brought people back to life all the time on The Vampire Diaries. I don’t know if they want to do that anymore, but I feel the same way. It’s really hard. tWhen you create a dynamic like that on set and it works, you really want to hold onto it, especially in TV. But it’s always about taking chances, and I think that’s for the best. We’ll see what happens. Maybe we’ll all come back and we’ll be ghost friends or something.

We Were Liars

Release Date

June 18, 2025

Network

Prime Video

Directors

Nzingha Stewart

Writers

E. Lockhart

We Were Liars is available to stream on Prime Video. Check out the trailer: