Spoilers for them Tell me lies The finale of the second season is approaching.

If a crime show like Big little lies When one goes beyond the book that inspired it, the temptation is to bury another body. But the second season of Hulu Tell me lies– a series based on the 2018 novel of the same name Carola Lovering– thoughtfully ensures that every character’s heart beats and then breaks, just like the show’s creator Meaghan Oppenheimer intended.

“It felt like a better show to me this season,” she says Vanity Fair in a current zoom. “I loved the first season, but I felt like Hulu allowed me to take a lot more risks this season. In the first season there was a death, the mystery of the body, and there’s usually pressure to have another death. I said, ‘How do I avoid this?’ ‘Cause I don’t want another murder.'” Jordan Helman, The head of original scripts at Hulu had a single instruction: “Just don’t bore me.”

Oppenheimer listened. The second season of tell me lies, It focuses on a group of enemies in the present day of 2015 and during their college years in 2008, which goes beyond the tortured romance of their classmates Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White). Lucy tries (and fails) to get over Stephen by dating reformed villain Leo (Thomas Doherty). Stephen breaks off his rekindled relationship with his increasingly jaded girlfriend Diana (Alicia Crowder), who later finds love for Pippa (Sonia Mena) – to the horror of her persecuted ex Wrigley (Spencer House). After learning that her loyal friend Evan (Branden Cook), slept with another woman, Bree (Catherine’s Missal) falls into the arms of her much older college professor Oliver (Tom Ellis), who is married to Bree and Lucy’s English teacher Marianne (Gabriella Passion). As if that wasn’t enough disruption, the season ends with a flash-forward to 2015 where Bree finds out that the woman Evan slept with was Lucy, just moments before she’s about to marry him. Boredom? What is boredom?

After dropping about a dozen bombs, Oppenheimer spoke up VF on writing a teacher-student relationship for the open marriage era, casting her real-life husband as her show’s dirty professor, and her sixth sense for creating shitty characters: “I don’t know how to write something that…” ” It’s a little dark.”

Vanity Fair: Earlier in the season, you said that a storyline involving Lucy had the potential to “cancel” you. I assume you were referring to how Lucy dealt with Pippa being sexually abused by Chris, her best friend Lydia’s brother. Lucy falsely claims that she was also one of his victims so that he might be held responsible – a decision that completely backfires. Why choose to take the plot in this direction?

Meaghan Oppenheimer: I knew at the beginning of the season that Lucy had to betray Lydia in some way and sacrifice herself for one of her friends. (In the 2015 timeline, Stephen and Lydia are engaged.) I’m not sure why I came up with the idea. It was very late at night. I lay in bed and my wheels were turning. Then I just thought: What if she says the sexual assault happened to her? Because that would be a huge betrayal of Lydia, at least in Lydia’s eyes, but she’s doing it for the right reason.