Season three of Tell Me Lies is officially underway, and as new episodes roll out weekly, the Hulu drama is already fueling nonstop conversation — especially around Pippa and Diana’s relationship and the way the show continues to balance chaos with intimacy.
Speaking with Gayety, Sonia Mena (Pippa), Alicia Crowder (Diana), and creator Meaghan Oppenheimer discussed fan reactions, the surprises of Season 2 reveals, and what fans can expect from Season 3.
“It feels really intimate.”
Even with the show’s growing fanbase, Mena says there was never a moment when the cast felt like they were making something “big.”
“I feel like what is so cool about making this show is that it feels really small. We’re all close. It’s a little family and it doesn’t really feel like we’re making something that a lot of people see.”
She said the cast has been surprised — and a little blown away — by how big the show has become. “When we’re making it, it feels really intimate and it doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be epic.’ We’re just like, ‘All right, let’s figure this out. How do we make this work? What’s fun? What’s good? What’s surprising?’”
Crowder added, “I feel like we’ve been able to maintain the preciousness of it and that even though it’s amazing how successful the show is and how exciting it is, that doesn’t really change what we do when we’re on set. And I think that that’s really important.”
Fans are smart — sometimes too smart
Even when the set feels intimate, Tell Me Lies has taken on a life of its own online. Since premiering in 2022, the series has built a fiercely dedicated fanbase, with viewers counting down to each new season and forming a community around Oppenheimer’s characters. Oppenheimer admitted that the audience’s ability to predict storylines has occasionally caught her off guard.
“I was surprised that people, a lot of people predicted Diana’s storyline last year,” she said. “They saw that reveal and that bummed me out. I’m not going to lie. I was sad that our audience is so smart.”
She was also struck by how harshly some characters were judged. “I’ve been mostly surprised at how hard the audience has been at times on some of the female characters. The way that they’ve reacted to Lucy being very angry at her, that has surprised me. And also the way that they have reacted to Brie last season, too. A lot of people did not see her as being such a victim with the Oliver situation, which I found to be quite shocking because to me, she’s clearly a victim there.”
Still, she said, “I love seeing the audiences. I mean, I love how passionately they respond. It makes me very happy.”
The shock of Pippa and Diana
The reveal of Pippa and Diana’s relationship remains one of the show’s most talked-about moments, and the cast felt it too. Viewers got their first glimpse of the couple in a flashback during season 2, and we’re still eager to see more about how these two came together.
“I was so shocked,” Mena said of the new relationship. “I was so shocked.”
Crowder admitted she initially questioned how the relationship would work, but said everything ultimately clicked. “They are such different people and in really different places in their life and all of that stuff, but it really has turned out to make sense and it doesn’t feel forced in any way. At first I was like, are people going to buy this? And I think they do. They like it.”
Representation without tokenization
For Oppenheimer, the goal was never to make the relationship about representation alone.
“I obviously was aware that it was bringing representation to the show and that I was very happy about that and that mattered to me,” she said. “But the most important thing to me was not have their storyline be about that. I wanted to make sure that it was just a three-dimensional storyline that had as much depth as any other relationship.”
She continued, “I think a lot of times, a lot of my queer friends have complained about on TV… that it’s someone wanting to hide their sexuality and it’s always about that. And when in real life, those relationships are so much more complicated than that and just as full-dimensional as any other relationship.”
At the end of the day, there’s also a simpler reason the storyline has resonated: viewers are just relieved to see a queer couple still standing on TV.
“I’m just so happy they survived,” Mena said.
“I keep seeing always horrifying statistics that all the gays are disappearing from television… Outside of just the nitty-gritty of who they are to each other and how their relationship functions, I’m just like, okay, they made it. At least they’re in 2026, there’s a little bit and hopefully much more.”
What Season 3 brings
With Season 3 already in motion, there’s plenty ahead for Pippa and Diana fans.
“You’ll see a lot more of it,” Oppenheimer teased. “I think it’s a bit of a rollercoaster, but I don’t want to give anything away.”
Mena described what’s coming as “every mistake you can make in your first early relationship and just best intentions, worst execution,” while Crowder added, “You get to see the honeymoon phase for a second, which is fun.”
TUNE IN
Season three premiered January 13, 2026, with new episodes streaming weekly on Hulu.
