Grace Van Patten’s Tell Me Lies Sex Scenes Got “Dark” In Season 3

Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for Tell Me Lies Season 3, through Episode 5. So far, Season 3 of Tell Me Lies has been just as twisted as ever — particularly when it comes to the show’s sex scenes. Grace Van Patten (who plays Lucy) and the show’s creator Meaghan Oppenheimer have both spoken about Lucy’s “dark” intimate scenes, explaining how the moments play into the character’s complicated feelings related to sex and “shame.”

In Season 3, Lucy starts up a romance with Alex (played by Costa D'Angelo). Their dynamic quickly turns toxic when she asks him to call her “pathetic” as part of a degradation kink. “There's something really dark about it," Van Patten told People about the onscreen romance on Jan. 24. "Really dark and really tragic, and shows how low Lucy really is mentally."

Rather than dealing with her feelings of shame directly, she’s using sex with Alex to process it all “which makes it even more secretive and subconscious,” Van Patten explained. According to her, her character is using this type of kink to "disguise it as whatever it is — as a sexual thing — when it really is so deep in her core." She added that these "really difficult, difficult scenes" to shoot.

Oppenheimer has also discussed these challenging moments — whether it’s a sex scene between Lucy and Alex or a masturbation scene with Lucy solo.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Oppenheimer gives insight on Lucy asking Alex to degrade her. "She’s in such a shame spiral that she believes this is what she deserves,” she told the outlet on Jan. 13. “Also, there’s a part of her that has learned with her relationship with Stephen to conflate chemistry with toxicity. I think she’s gotten so used to that being part of what is sexual for her that she can’t give it up, and so she’s a little bit addicted to it."

Oppenheimer also touched on this dynamic in an interview with Us Weekly, published Jan. 27. “With Lucy, we’ve seen the little hints of her shaming herself. But she really goes into it in an inescapable way this season,” she said. At one point, Lucy masturbates to a toxic voicemail from her ex Stephen (played by Jackson White).

Per Oppenheimer, it felt “very organic and realistic” for Lucy to handle her internal shame through her sex life with Alex. “These two characters would find each other in the sense that Lucy’s seeking shame and seeking punishment because she feels like she deserves it — so she’s asking for that in sex,” she said. “It just was something that I hadn’t seen really explored before in that way. That is always something that’s interesting to me. I’m always trying to explore sex as a conversation in the show.”