If you haven’t watched “Tell Me Lies” on Hulu yet, now’s a good time to start. The show, a dramatization of the novel of the same name by Carola Lovering, officially began its second season on September 3, and the drama it’s unfolding is like no other.
The series follows a group of students who attended college together in 2007 and 2008, moving back and forth between their student years and their post-college lives in 2015. In season 1, the storyline revolved around students Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and Steven DeMarco (Jackson White) and their tumultuous (yet still a little steamy) relationship. This season, the series delves deeper into the relationships of their friends, including Bree (Katherine Missal), Wrigley (Spencer House), Pippa (Sonia Meena), Diana (Alicia Crowder), and Evan (Branden Cook).
Our group chat has been buzzing ever since season two aired. There’s a lot to uncover not only about the characters on the show, but also their beauty looks as they tell important storylines. For example, there’s a clear difference in the makeup and hairstyles of college sophomores Lucy, Pippa and Bri. According to the Tell Me Lies hair and makeup department, this is all intentional.
Keep reading to find out the on-set makeup and hair secrets of each character.
Experts featured in this article
Caprice Green is a hairstylist with over 20 years of experience working on set for movies and TV shows such as “Neighbors 2” and “CSI: Vegas.” She heads up the hair department for Hulu’s “Tell Me Lies.”
Jenny Lin is a makeup designer specializing in special effects makeup for film, television and commercials. She was the head of the makeup department on “Tell Me Lies” and “NCIS: Origins.”
Lucy’s Hair & Makeup Journey
Hulu
Let’s start with Lucy’s aesthetic transformation. In Season 1, she was just graduating high school, which suited the role perfectly. “If you look at her home and her upbringing, she’s WASP-like and very simple – her hair was clean, blow-dried, plain, maybe in a ponytail, nothing major,” Caprice Green, head of hair for the series, tells PS. “In Season 1, Steven completely tarnishes her sweet, innocent persona, and she tries to become a vampire and do 10 times as much for Steven.”
Green says it was around that time that Lucy opted for bigger, wavy hair: “It was a very clear transition from clean, straight,[and]perfect hair to the bigger hairstyles that we were doing in 2007, like Christina Aguilera’s, which was one of the references that we had a lot of on our mood boards.” Fast forward to Season 2, and Lucy is still trying to be someone she’s not, but in a different way.
“She’s more grown up, but she’s fooled herself into thinking she’s forgotten about Steven,” Green says. “She’s still very self-conscious and doesn’t want to look typical.” Lucy still dresses provocatively and wears a lot of makeup.
“She wears makeup like armor,” says makeup department head Jenny Lin. At the start of season one, her beauty routine was completely different; the team emphasized her fresh face and abundant freckles. She wore brown mascara and very little brown eyeliner. “She looks completely different from the end of season one, when she was super tan,” Lin says. “She was wearing a lot of makeup, because that represented the cycle that she was going through.”
For season two, the team continued to use Lucy’s hair and makeup to portray her inner conflict over everything that happened in season one. “She’s back pretending that nothing bothers her, still looking put-together, but with more of an understated charm,” says Lin. “She’s got a more natural tan, a more natural style.” But that’s expected to change in the second half of the season. “There will be moments later where you’ll see where she is with the makeup.”
Bri’s Hair & Makeup Journey
Hulu
Naturally, Lucy isn’t the only one facing problems in season two. Bri, who the team says will be “taking center stage this time,” begins an affair with a professor who’s married to one of her teachers. “She’s obsessed with Marianne, who’s a teacher and his wife, and she’s like, ‘What’s so great about her?’ So she’s experimenting,” Green says. “She’s trying to be a little more sexy and she’s trying to find herself.”
In season one, Bri was bare-bones and wore minimal makeup. But when she returns from summer break, Bri is not the same. “She’s come back with more sex and experience,” says Lynn. At the beginning of the season, her makeup was heavy on pink and glitter. “As Bri starts to spiral, we see her make-up get messed up more and more in class, as she becomes obsessed with Marianne. She tries to imitate Marianne to get Oliver’s attention.”
Pippa’s hair and makeup journey
Hulu
Pippa, meanwhile, undergoes perhaps the most dramatic change in Season 2: bleach blonde hair, a far cry from her dark brunette color in Season 1. “At first, it was going to be a softer blonde, but when you’re younger, you want to do everything ten times more,” Green says. “Pippa starts to become more carefree. In Season 1, she wasn’t that girl. She cared so much about her clothes and her makeup and her hair. Now she’s just like, ‘I don’t care, I’m bleach blonde and I’m going to have some fun.'”
But as the season progresses, her look will change, too. “She goes through her own journey, too, and as we move forward, you’ll see how the makeup reflects that,” Lin says. Lin and Green point out that things really start to heat up in the Halloween episode, airing September 25 at 12 a.m. ET. “You guys are going to be amazed when you see it, so prepare yourself,” Lin says. “It’s a very big moment and a fun episode for everybody. (That’s) when it really heats up.”
Renee Rodriguez is a staff writer and social producer at PS. She writes across all disciplines, but her primary specialty is fashion and beauty content, with a focus on reviews and editorial experimentation. She also produces social content for PS’s TikTok and Instagram accounts.
