Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the third and final season of Tell Me Lies.
Branden Cook is ready to take the heat from Tell Me Lies fans.
In the first two seasons of the buzzy Hulu drama series, Cook’s Evan was mainly positioned as an affluent “good guy” who stood in stark contrast with Jackson White’s master manipulator Stephen. But for the show’s third (and now final) season, Cook embraced a darker turn for the character. This surprising shift aligns Evan more closely with the story’s more morally corrupt characters, like Stephen and Oliver (Tom Ellis)—the married professor who infamously had an affair with Evan’s future bride Bree (Cat Missal) while she was still an undergrad.
“I think he’s seen what other people do and the result they get, and he got sick of not getting the same result. So whether it be Stephen or Oliver, I think both of them had qualities that he admired, maybe out of immaturity, so he tried to push a little more towards that way,” Cook tells Teen Vogue. Over the course of the season, Evan has a casual sexual relationship with fellow student Molly (played by Cook’s real-life fiancée, Katherine Hughes)—only to drop her immediately after Bree decides to give their relationship another chance. Wracked with guilt over hooking up with Lucy behind Bree’s back, Evan becomes a quietly overbearing boyfriend, finding subtle ways to make Bree believe that he is the only safe place she has left.
In the penultimate episode, Evan secretly sabotaged Bree’s photography exhibit by getting her estranged mother drunk and then bringing her to the showcase. It’s the first real indication that Evan is becoming a Stephen lite. “My fiancée is on [social media] a little bit, so she gives me updates here and there of what’s going on,” Cook says of the audience’s reaction to that twist with a cheeky smile. “It’s fresh, but I’m excited to see how people react to it.”
Tuesday’s finale brings the story of Tell Me Lies to a satisfying close, albeit with more than a few lingering questions. At the end of Evan and Bree’s wedding reception in 2015, Evan discovers during Stephen’s impromptu speech that his new wife not only leaked the tape that got protagonist Lucy (Grace Van Patten) expelled from college years earlier, but she has also been cheating on Evan for months with his best friend, Wrigley (Spencer House). Needless to say, the toxic college friend group has been blown apart beyond repair, likely leading to creator and showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer’s decision to call time on the series after three seasons.
“There have been conversations [about continuing the show] and what potentially that would look like. I definitely had an idea that it might be [the final season] just because I knew how Meaghan felt about it,” Cook reveals. “I was cool with whatever Meaghan wanted to do because creatively this is her show, and I trust her. I’m very glad I got to be a part of this and just really grateful for the experience and the people along the way. This show changed my life.”
Below, Cook reflects on Evan’s unexpected heel turn, what he imagines his character’s life looks like after that disastrous wedding—and why he thinks this show has unwittingly spawned a number of offscreen romantic relationships.
Branden Cook: I think he was much more [like] do as you’re told, do the right thing, be a nice guy, be a good person. I think this season specifically, he’s seeing that that’s not working, and he’s not able to get what he feels like he deserves. It was definitely a surprise, but I think everybody has a breaking point. Everybody has a point where they have probably thought of doing the wrong thing, even if they haven’t done it. I think for Evan, he had reached the point where he was like, “OK, well, I’m going to try and do [the bad thing].” He does 100% realize [the nice guy persona] has kind of gone away, and he’s made conscious efforts to not be that way anymore. As you see with him getting Bree’s mom drunk and stuff like that, he’s like, “This is what works. This is what I need to do.” And it’s unfortunate.
BC: If I’m honest, I think he doesn’t really have a strong father figure that he could relate to, so he’s operating without a lot of guidance. I think that time in college is so precious and so vulnerable too. You’re really trying to understand who you are as a young man, as a human in this life now without your parents, but you still need a little guidance from your parents. I think with his relationship being so weird with his dad, he’s finding [that support] in other ways, because he’s seeing that, “For one reason or another, I was this way and that’s not working. That’s the old Evan. In order for me to mature and be better and get what I want, I need to be this other way.” So I think what was driving him is just not having the proper guidance that he probably would need from his dad.
BC: No, because I think Evan still has the power a little bit. If you remember a few episodes ago, [Evan’s] like, “Yo, if I have my dad pay for [your sister’s] scholarship, we’re good. No more problems, no more issues.” And I think weirdly enough, Stephen honors that, except obviously at the very end. But for the most part, he does honor that because there’s a lot going on with Stephen, a lot of family stuff. I could have a lot of empathy for how Stephen was raised and stuff like that—[but] maybe not his actions.
I think Evan helped with [Stephen’s family], so Stephen has to be like, “Oh, by doing something like this, this man has been a better friend to me than I’ve ever been to anybody. So even if I want to do certain stuff, I have to be aware.” Even in the [penultimate] episode, when Lucy’s like, “Oh, well, you should tell Bree [about me sleeping with Evan], you can do it for me,” Stephen goes, “But what about the Evan of it all?” He considers Evan because he has to, because otherwise he disappoints his sister and his mom again, and he’s out of their good graces and has literally no one. So I think he honors Evan a little bit.
BC: I think that he has a lot of guilt. He views himself in a certain type of way, and how he was raised was, “I’m a nice guy. This is how I need to be.” And once that veil was lifted and it showed, “Hey, you did this really bad thing [by cheating],” I think he really internalized that and was like, “I have to make this right, whether Bree is right for me or not, whether she’s the one for me or not.” Because if you remember season 1, Evan didn’t really even pursue Bree. But it’s a lot of guilt: “I said I was going to be a nice guy and a good boyfriend, and I’m not doing that because I did this thing, so now I have to make that right.”
As Branden, I can understand wanting to make it right. I’m like, “Alright, bro, but do you even like her though? Do you really want her?” [Laughs.] But Evan’s so blinded. He’s like, “No, I have to make this right. The right way is to get back with her, and she’d be mine.” There’s a little bit of control in there; there’s a little bit of safety in there. I think he feels like there’s a little bit of weird power dynamic there as well. There’s a lot of things that make him feel good with Bree that maybe he didn’t get with other people, and that’s why he just aggressively did not give up. Evan is a story of perseverance. [Laughs.] This man will not stop; he will not give up. And until the very, very end, he does kind of get what he wants.
BC: I found out about it when we first got the scripts, and [I thought] it was crazy. Actually, this is the third love triangle I’m technically a part of. It was me, Stephen and Lucy; myself, Oliver and Bree; and then now it’s Wrigley, Bree and myself. So Evan loves a love triangle. [Laughs.] But they’re fun though. There’s a lot that obviously Evan doesn’t know. From the acting point of view, you’re operating in a sense of, “How much do I know? How much don’t I know? How do I play with that? How do I show or not show that?” It was definitely shocking, but fun.
BC: With the dynamics, it was tough because he just didn’t know anything. This wasn’t like season two where he then finds out about Oliver. Evan’s none the wiser [about] Wrigley in that situation until obviously the very, very end with the wedding. So not really engaging in that, but engaging fully in the second love triangle with Oliver and seeing if I can get something from that—that was fun. I was like, “Well, why does he go to Oliver to ask him for help? How do I really make that make sense in a way? It’s desperation. You see you’re losing something, and this person had it and better than you had it. So how do you adjust?”
BC: I think he took away that, “You need to make Bree feel like she needs you.” It’s very manipulative and very evil. But I think for the purpose of the characters and what they were trying to do, it made sense. I think Oliver was completely right. And had it not been for Bree discovering the other part [about Evan cheating on her], I think it 100% actually worked. That’s why at the end of episode seven, you see Evan is excited. He’s like, “Oh, my plan worked. I fully committed, and this is what I got. I got what I wanted.” Up until the end of the college timeline when she confronts me about Lucy—and even after that, honestly—everything kind of works out for Evan, which is funny. That’s probably not the best lesson, but [in Evan’s mind], “Once I do evil and fully turn, everything actually works out for me until years later when it catches up.” But yeah, it’s kind of f*cked.
BC: I think he was fully blindsided. If you look at episode seven, obviously, [Evan] makes a comment about the picture that they took, and there was a little bit of like, “What is this?” But I don’t think Evan would ever expect that from Wrigley. If it was Stephen, maybe. But from Wrigley, I think he was totally blindsided, which is why I think Evan ends up face down in a cake because he’s like, “What is happening in my life?” The yelling at Wrigley part was like, “Well, how did we get here? Out of all people—you?” And it’s more fun to play completely blindsided.
BC: Well, they had three cakes, and they had a stunt guy who was great. Basically, I was really adamant on doing my stunt just because I’ve always wanted to do a stunt. I grew up watching Jason Bourne with my grandpa, so I was like, “I got to start doing some stunts.” So they were like, “We’ll let [the stunt man] do it the first time. You can do it the second time. And if we need to, he’ll do it the third time.” He did it the first time, and it looked great. They gave me a couple notes. So now I had to be locked in because I’m like, “I want them to use my take, so this has to be it.” It hurt like hell! It was definitely more painful than I thought, and I salute all the stunt people for constantly putting their bodies through that, but I wouldn’t have changed it. I’m so happy I did it. It was so fun.
BC: That part was improvised, actually! [The producers] were just like, “We need something.” And I just felt like that [line] made the most sense of, “What just happened?! How did I end up here in this cake with my face planted in it?”
BC: No, there was definitely some improvisation. They gave me some ideas and I used those as well, but there was definitely a take where it got really dark, and I think they buried that one. [Laughs.] But it was really fun.
BC: Well, there was definitely no more wedding, no more marriage. [Laughs.] Maybe Evan moves back home to wallow and soak in his feelings for a very long time. I just feel like he’s such a sensitive boy that it’s going to be a hard fix for him. I don’t know where he goes though. I didn’t even think about it, honestly, but I’m sure he would be very sad.
BC: [Laughs.] Katherine and I actually were dating before the show. We’re kind of OGs in that way. We’ve been dating for five years. We got engaged around our fifth year anniversary around then. So yeah, we had been together before. But I don’t know, man. [If you] get a bunch of actors together, I keep seeing that eventually something like that kind of starts cooking! But, yeah, Katherine and I have been locked in for a while, which is nice. It is a dream come true, honestly. I think you have feelings of: How is [working with your partner] going to work? And you’re hoping that everything goes smooth or whatever, but it was better than I could have even imagined. I’m really grateful that we will forever have this thing together that…I was going to say we could show our kids one day, but probably not. [Laughs.] But it’s really, really cool, man. I’m really grateful that we were able to do it together.
