“It’s over,” Nate announces, somewhat breathless. Meanwhile a troubled Addy looks on and quips, “I think it’s just getting started.” Cut to a brooding camera shot looking up at six anxious teens gazing over the side of the boat from which they tossed a dead body and, well, welcome to Season Two of One Of Us Is Lying.
Kudos to series creator Erica Saleh, who’s peppered her small screen version of Karen M. McManus YA murder mystery book with plenty of sizzle and suspense. Long gone are those high school days when the biggest worry was passing AP Bio and landing a prom date. Ah, how sweet. Not so in One Of Us Is Lying.
Season One of the popular streaming series—an amped-up Breakfast Club with six shots of creative espresso—introduced us to the “Murder Club” and an ominous online antagonist dubbed Simon Says after the shocking death/murder(?) of Simon (Mark McKenna) during detention. The shocking event forever changes the lives of Simon’s classmates—Addy (Annalisa Cochrane), Nate (Cooper van Grootel), Bronwyn (Marianly Tejada), and Cooper (Chibuikem Uche). Flashforward a gaggle of episodes and we learn that Addy’s hunky beau Jake (Barrett Carnahan) was responsible for Simon’s demise. One tussle in a dark forest later and Jake is shot, then dies.
Now what?
When Season One bowed, the Murder Club gaped at their incoming texts, which threatened to reveal what happened with Jake. The story goes on, much to the delight of Saleh, who tells MovieWeb what she’s most excited about ahead Season Two and what’s at stake.
Raising The Stakes In Season Two
MovieWeb: What felt most daunting coming into Season Two as you began moving beyond the original source material?
Erica Saleh: Honestly, we were always hoping to make this a multi-season show and knew that changing the ending of the book was key to doing that. We snuck that in in Season One, already thinking about what we were going to wrestle with in Season Two. Mostly, it’s just been a ton of fun to take these characters who people know and love and seeing what happens to them after the book. Such as: How do you keep going after a traumatic event? And what do these friendships look like when they're really tested? I think the daunting thing—the thing certainly on our minds—was that people loved the book and the characters. Now, we're now taking them in new directions, telling a new story.
MW: What was most compelling for you moving forward?
Erica Saleh: Starting to go a little darker was most compelling. I think in Season one, the characters have all done some messed up stuff by that point. They're all hiding these secrets they're not proud of from Season One. But they realized that part of being a person is making mistakes and living honestly, and that going to be good for them. In Season Two, we’re letting ourselves wrestle a little more with the gray areas and challenging the characters’ morality—not making them good all the time. Because people aren't good all the time.
MW: What inspired the new plot twists ahead?
Erica Saleh: I definitely came into the writers’ room sort of knowing who I thought Simon Says was and knowing a general arc for the season. But I have such a great staff of writers who pushed some of the characters into territories that surprised me. I wasn’t necessarily planning on taking on the journeys we took them on. I think some of the friendships, antagonists, and characters that were quite small in Season One, really blow up in Season Two.
Going Beyond The Original Source Material
MW: What was it about the book that really caught your attention and made you want to create something that took it further?
Erica Saleh: It was the characters, definitely. The book takes these four sorts of Breakfast Club teen archetypes and starts to peel away the layers to say that people are more complicated than that. I loved that about the book, and I wanted to show what happens when you start being honest about who you are. It's not always easy. People look at you in different ways. And you have these new friendships with people who are quite different from you. And that can be really complicated. I was very excited to explore that.
MW: So, what movies or TV shows really inspired you when you were growing up?
Erica Saleh: I love that question. My So-Called Life really got me as a teenager. That was the first time I saw kids on screen who weren't shiny. It felt real. I was like, “Yeah, those are real honest emotions.” That was so exciting to me. I was a big Buffy fan, too. Seeing this badass, cool, empowered, young woman at the heart of the show who assumed the superpowers we all wish we had—that was great. Those two shows really got me through high school.
One Of Us Is Lying streams on Peacock on October 20, 2022.