The Major Differences Between Hulu's Tell Me Lies And The Book

For some viewers, one of the greatest deterrents to watching a show about high school students is that the turmoil the characters engage in often appears improbable for someone their age. Even ratings titans such as "Euphoria" are guilty of this now and again. However, Hulu's drama "Tell Me Lies" avoids this drawback to some degree by taking place on a college campus.

"Tell Me Lies" follows Stephen and Lucy as they navigate one of the worst relationships in recent TV history and how it impacts everyone around them. The plot of the first season begins in 2007 and spans eight years. Thus, the series smartly chooses era-appropriate rock songs for the soundtrack and nearly every character sports a blackberry. All of this adds to the show's immersive quality.

The show is impressive, and it's not just because it's created by "Fear the Walking Dead" alum Meaghan Oppenheimer. The drama is based on Carola Lovering's book of the same name. As expected, the show takes creative license with the novel and alters some events. Screen adaptations change events from the source material for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the cause is as simple as making the show's filming more convenient, and other times the screen adaptation simply has different goals. Let's look at all that and more as we explore the major differences between Hulu's "Tell Me Lies" and the novel.

Lucy's hometown of Cold Harbor, Long Island, doesn't get any attention in the series. The viewers are only told that Lucy's father was in the army and her mother is a working mother. As a result, the show implies that Lucy is upper-middle class. This softens the contrast between her upbringing and Stephen's background. In fact, with the exception of Evan, no one in their friend group appears to be particularly wealthy.

The book, on the other hand, dives deeper into Lucy's past. The book's version of her father works in finance and never serves in the military. The book also strongly emphasizes their family's lifestyle. Everyone who grew up with Lucy has lofty goals of attending an Ivy League school, and while tennis is only mentioned briefly on the show, it's all the rage among Lucy's childhood friends in the novel. Furthermore, Lucy's mother's portrayal in the book is profoundly entrenched in her position as a new member of the upper-class, having not come from such a family herself.

While the book provides a more in-depth understanding of these characters, the show's writers clearly focus less on Lucy's background, which helps the show avoid distractions that would not have made a meaningful contribution to the story's focus. Lucy's journey on the show has nothing to do with her wealthy upbringing, and it was ultimately prudent to only briefly mention it.

Diana (Alicia Crowder) is Stephen's on-again, off-again girlfriend. And as is the case for all of Stephen's relationships, he harbors resentment toward her. He clearly cares about her, but in a complex and possessive way. Stephen is also envious of Diana — it's almost as if she won the lottery when she was born. Diana is both gorgeous and intelligent, and she hails from a wealthy family.

While Diana's portrayal in the show is somewhat one-dimensional, it is still more than she gets the novel. Readers only learn about Diana through Stephen's harsh point of view in the book, and she never interacts with Lucy. So it comes as quite a surprise when the show chose to show Diana and Lucy chatting early on at Diana's fundraiser. During the brief talk, Lucy realizes that Diana is actually a decent person.

The show's insistence on fully realizing all of the characters involved in Stephen and Lucy's relationship only helps to demonstrate how even one dysfunctional relationship can bring out the worst in everyone it impacts. Ultimately, despite her dignity, Diana recognizes that playing dirty is the quickest way to get what she wants.

In the episode "Castle on a Cloud," Evan (Branden Cook) invites the entire crew to his family's lake house for his birthday weekend. And the episode focuses on the fractured nature of their friend group and how, despite being the good guy in the group, Evan has his limits. Bree and Evan bond over their shared suspicion that all of their friends are selfish — Evan didn't even trust any of them to get him a cake for his birthday.

Although the series devotes an entire episode to showing Bree and Evan's shared values and the foundation of their relationship, this is not based on the source material. Their romance is understated throughout the book, and their wedding is predicated on the fortuity of their attending the same college. However, the creators of the series also examine the minor aspects of their relationship, such as the two confiding in each other intimate secrets about their childhood that are unknown to everyone else.

The show compensates for the lack of focus on Lucy's youth by fully developing every supporting character. This enhances the story world and raises the stakes when Stephen and Lucy meddle in their lives to save their doomed romance.

The mystery surrounding Macy's death serves as the show's engine. The night of Macy's death appears to be an unfortunate accident for which no one is directly responsible. However, as the show progresses, it becomes clear that this is not the case. Initially, viewers learn that Drew was present on the night of the accident. Then finally, during the finale (directed by Robin Wright), viewers learn that Stephen —rather than Macy — was drunk driving the car. After the crash, he moved Macy to the driver's seat and ran away. 

Lucy only ever knows Macy as a new roommate and doesn't actively look into the circumstances surrounding her passing. Lucy only begins to really consider it after Stephen admits to her that he was present on the night of Macy's death. However, Stephen retells the tale with half-truths, claiming that he was not the one driving and blaming Drew entirely. He explained to Lucy that he fled the scene because he was afraid people would falsely blame him due to his working-class upbringing.

This is handled differently in the book in several respects. For starters, Macy is Lucy's high school friend, and Lucy enters college still plagued by her death. Furthermore, the crash is caused by an argument between Macy and Stephen in the show. In the book, it's caused by Macy performing oral sex on Stephen while he's driving drunk.

Budgetary concerns can create key contrasts between books and their on-screen adaptations. In novels, a tale is limited solely by the writer's imagination. Meanwhile, producers must always consider the budget of whatever they're filming. Producers must constantly work out how to portray the story's spirit in the most cost-effective way possible.

As a result, compromises are occasionally required to make a page-to-screen transfer function. In the case of Hulu's "Tell Me Lies," one such concession is the relocation of the show's fictional Baird College from California to New York. While the actual production took place in Georgia, the change isn't totally arbitrary. It makes Lucy's breakup with her high school boyfriend appear more frivolous, and makes Lucy and Stephen more involved in one another's lives. It's almost as though they can't get away from each other, whether they like it or not. They all live close to each other, so it makes sense that despite everything, they'd find a way back to each other.

Much of the show follows Stephen (Jackson White) as he schemes and plots his way through everyday problems. His behavior can be partially attributed to his uneasiness about coming from a lower-income family than the bulk of his friends. In the show, his father abandons his mother, and they must find a way to make ends meet. And his mother (played by living television institution Katey Sagal) is just as cunning as Stephen when it comes to luring others into her pursuit of what she wants. So even though Stephen isn't very fond of his mother, both factors contribute to the type of man he is.

In a pivotal episode when Diana helps Stephen get a job interview at a prominent law firm, he pretends to be from a more affluent background than he really is. His lies backfire in his face, causing him to lose his opportunity. In the book, his family's financial woes are less pronounced, and his mother is the one who abandons their father, so Stephen is less concerned about money than in the show. But that doesn't mean the show blames his behavior on his upbringing. In contrast, the show also portrays Bree as someone who does not come from a privileged background and has a less-than-ideal family life, but she is always pleasant to all her friends.

As part of the show's development of every supporting character, Bree gets a more complicated past than we see in the novel. When she meets Evan, it's during an awkward side gig as a nude model in an art class so she can make some money to help with her college life. Later, Evan and Bree meet in the mailroom where Bree is laughing at a postcard. Evan inquires what she is laughing at, and the conversation leads to her telling him that she was a foster child who moved to three different homes throughout her childhood.

On the other hand, the novel spends little time developing her character beyond being Lucy's friend. Her background is never mentioned. And the circumstances under which she meets Evan are different. When everyone else has gone home from school, the two are introduced by Stephen.

The show's concentration on not blending the supporting characters into the background suits its purpose, but it does not necessarily make it better than the source material. The book focuses more on Lucy and Stephen's subjective points of view, and it makes sense why they aren't be too concerned about the details of their friends' lives. On the other hand, the show gives viewers a bird's-eye view of Lucy and Stephen's friends' lives, and both approaches seem to work.