SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Prime Video’s We Were Liars, including the finale.
One of the core elements of E. Lockhart’s young adult novel We Were Liars is the will they won’t they dynamic between Cadence Sinclair Eastman and Gatwick Patil.
The television series adaptation follows Emily Alyn Lind’s Cadence, who goes by Cady, and Shubham Maheshwari’s Gat across eight episodes within a timeline slightly more condensed than that of the novel. All Cadence knows at the start of the show is that she suffered a traumatic brain injury during what she and her friend group call summer 16. Now, in summer 17, she is back on Beechwood Island, her favorite place where her rich, white, Democratic family summers every year, trying to remember what happened to her in summer 16.
Those who have read Lockhart’s book have an idea of how the story ends and what indeed did occur to leave Cadence questioning her memories, which slowly filter back to her through selective amnesia and migraines.
“Whether this happened, summer 16 or 17 or 18, there was going to be a crack, because it was slowly chipping away [at] this family, it was slowly breaking these kids down for so long that,” Lind told Deadline. “All of a sudden it was just going to plummet to the ground.”
We’ll leave the details murky for those who want to finish the show, which has all episodes now streaming on Prime Video. The below conversation does lightly spoil the finale and the outcome of Gat and Cady’s romance, as a warning!
L-R: Emily Alyn Lind and Shubham Maheshwari
DEADLINE: How did both of you approach this first love romance between Cadence and Gat especially with what happens in the end?
EMILY ALYN LIND: I think we both agree that they were never gonna not be together. I don’t think that they would have ever just been friends.
In regard to the love story and how beautiful it was, we had such a great time establishing that chemistry. It was so vulnerable. We worked with Nzingha Stewart, our amazing pilot director. She really took us under her arm, and made us feel so comfortable. She had us hone into that feeling of first love because that is the most gut-wrenching, horrible, amazing, terrifying feeling in the world, and you just can’t replicate it, and you never do.
SHUBHAM MAHESHWARI: Me, [Emily] and Nzingah were just so in love with the story, so in love with the characters together and each other. We’ve talked about this forbidden love aspect of it, and that’s what this is. When that happens, you almost want them to be together even more because the reasons they can be together are just so unfortunate, so sad, so tragic.
DEADLINE: Shubham, how did you approach building Gat as his own character outside of Cadence’s mind and memories? How does what happened in summer 16 complicate that?
MAHESHWARI: The thing I always liked thinking about or coming back to was, Gat lost his father when he was eight years old, and that was the first time he came to the island too. That was a horrible year, and then he comes to this island, this mythical, magical place, and he meets Cadence there. And since then, to him, Cadence has always been some sort of an anchor that he at that moment.
Then she just became that person who he, with her, resonates happy feelings and a better place because he met her at such a difficult time. That was something He always wants to protect her. As far as the secret aspect of it is concerned, how summer 17 was done, it goes back to wanting to protect this person that he loves so much. He knows how this secret could spoil her and ruin her. He wanted to do whatever he possibly can to protect her.
DEADLINE: Can you both talk about filming that final goodbye scene between your characters?
LIND: Are you trying to make us cry? We were wrecked.
MAHESHWARI: It was so sad. Oh, honestly, we haven’t said this yet, but we decided not to really rehearse the ending. I’m really glad we did that because it just felt so real.
LIND: Yeah, me and Shubham, [there was] not one minute of the day we weren’t on set for the full four or five months. We were pretty much on set every moment of every day. And any time that we had off, he’d be coming over to my house, and we’d be rehearsing, or we’d be in trailers and rehearsing. First off, it was just a lot, and then second off, we were going between summer 16 and summer 17. So we were both going through this hurdle of jumping in and out of these really different characters in a way pre and post trauma.
There were so many things to talk about, but the final scene was something that we both agreed we really wanted to make real. It was actually the same with the other liars. I think I ran over that scene maybe once or twice, but we just really wanted it to feel genuine. And it did.
