Julie Plec‘s adaptation of E. Lockhart‘s novel We Were Liars has been in development for a long time. Plec, best known for being the driving force in The Vampire Diaries universe, collaborated with Carina Adly McKenzie, with whom she worked on Roswell, New Mexico and The Originals, to tell the story of the Sinclair family. The show found a home on Prime Video, and the international streamer has set the premiere date. Subscribers can dive into the story when all episodes premiere on June 18. In anticipation of the upcoming release, the platform shared some images from the series, introducing the four core teen characters known as the Liars. Emily Alyn Lind (Gossip Girl), Shubham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor, and Joseph Zada play Cadence, Gat, Mirren, and Johnny, respectively. The show also includes adult characters played by Mammie Gummer (Carrie), Caitlin Fitzgerald (Penny), Candice King (Bess), David Morse (Harris), Wendy Crewson (Tipper), and Rahul Kohli (Ed).
Below is the official series description.
“Based on the best-selling novel by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars, the series follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her tight-knit inner circle, nicknamed the Liars, during their summer escapades on her grandfather’s New England private island. The Sinclairs are American royalty — known for their good looks, old money, and enviable bond — but after a mysterious accident changes Cadence’s life forever, everyone, including her beloved Liars, seems to have something to hide.”
‘We Were Liars’ Will Differ From the Books It’s Based On
Plec and Adly McKenzie took the liberty of changing some things in the novel to create a better audio-visual experience, all with Lockhart‘s blessings. “A TV show and a novel are so radically different. The TV show has to expand and reinvent. We Were Liars is about the inside of one teenage girl’s head, so I absolutely understood that they were going to explode it out and show other people’s perspectives. A TV show is never centered on solely the experience of a single character,” the book’s author told Entertainment Weekly about approving changes. She reveals that the show will not focus solely on Cadence’s perspective. Still, Adly MacKenzie said book readers will find something familiar yet different, saying:
“We really want readers of the book to watch this and still feel like they’re getting something new. So we did want to make some adjustments, but we wanted to make sure none of those adjustments flew in the face of what the core of this book is. So I think that readers of the book, even readers who are diehard fans and do remember every word of the book, are going to find some exciting new things in here.”
The eight-episode first season of We Were Liars debuts on June 18.
via Collider