How to Get Cast on ‘We Were Liars’

“We Were Liars” follows the Sinclair family as they spend their annual summer vacation on Beechwood Island, the private island near Martha’s Vineyard owned by patriarch Harris. Cadence—along with her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and Gat, the nephew of her aunt’s partner—are known as “The Liars” in the family. When Cadence is 15, she suffers a severe head injury during the summer and can’t remember the details of her time on the island that year. 

The following year, Cadence’s mother, Penny, prevents her from returning to Beechwood. But she does return the year after, when she’s 17. Plagued by the amnesia that’s haunted her since her injury, Cadence must discover the truth of that tragic summer, before she can make peace with the guilt she’s hiding deep down.

Season 1’s cast of “We Were Liars” features:

• Emily Alyn Lind as Cadence Sinclair Eastman
• Brady Droulis as Will Sinclair Dennis
• Esther McGregor as Mirren Sinclair Sheffield
• Wendy Crewson as Tipper Sinclair
• David Morse as Harris Sinclair
• Caitlin FitzGerald as Penny Sinclair Eastman
• Candice King as Bess Sinclair Sheffield
• Rahul Kohli as Ed
• Mamie Gummer as Carrie Sinclair Dennis
• Joseph Zada as Johnny Sinclair Dennis
• Shubham Maheshwari as Gat Patil
• Emerson MacNeil as Bonnie Sinclair Sheffield
• Nikita Goold as Young Mirren
• Leandro Vigueras as Young Gat
• Manaia Wall as Liberty Sinclair Sheffield
• Dylan Bruce as Brody Sheffield
• Raewynn Martel as Young Cadence

Featureflash Photo Agency/Kathy Hutchins/DFree/Shutterstock

Deanna Brigidi (“Shotgun Wedding”) and Andrea Bunker (“Big Little Lies”) are the main CDs behind “We Were Liars” Season 1. However, its showrunners, Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie, also had a hand in the casting process.

Having adapted “The Vampire Diaries” for the CW, Plec knows what it’s like to bring an author’s vision to life onscreen. But as she told Deadline, “Anytime you’re adapting something, you have to give yourself certain freedoms in order to tell the best version of the story that you want to tell.” So, even if you do not quite match up with a book’s character description, there’s no harm in auditioning. You just might have that special something that inspires creators and CDs to go against the grain and fight for your casting.

Plec told Deadline casting isn’t as easy as some might believe. “Casting a pilot is so hard, because you don’t yet have the voices of the characters in your head in a way that makes somebody instantly undeniable as a choice,” she shared. “I speak for myself. I don’t want to say that as though I’m speaking for the world, but I find casting difficult. And every now and then someone will come in and just read the scene exactly like how you heard it in your head. That’s thrilling. But more often than not, you’re molding and shifting what you think the character sounds like, and trying to match it with some sense of something exciting you get from whoever’s auditioning.”

Having worked with King on “The Vampire Diaries”—the actor played Caroline Forbes—Plec and MacKenzie were set on casting the former CW star again. “From almost day one, [we] were writing Bess in Candice’s voice…but we thought she was too young, and we didn’t think we’d be able to get her hired. Then we realized that we didn’t care,” Plec said. “Candice has a very grownup, mom soul, in addition to being this young, vibrant woman. We knew she could do it, and we just decided to put her forward and hope for the best and keep our fingers crossed and prepared to go into battle for her. And then nobody said no. Everyone just thought it was a great idea. All of our anxieties were for not.

“And honestly, I mean, if Caroline Forbes is the part she was born to play, Bess Sinclair is the part that she’s meant to play next,” Plec added. “They’re the same person, just separated by two generations and some children.

While Plec told Deadline that filming had nearly wrapped in September 2024, she also indicated their story sets the stage for a second season. “I think fans of the book are going to be very, very happy, because I think we hit all the marks and all the beats that the book does, and then also expand the universe, layers upon layers upon layers to really make the adult characters really nuanced and really multi-layered, and to set the stage for Season 2,” she said, “which theoretically is going to take us deeper into the moms’ lives as well and add another generation to the story.”

Though the series hasn’t yet been renewed, Plec did note, “Amazon, in particular, has been very vocal about wanting to service their YA audience.” Stay tuned for more updates.

At this time, Prime Video hasn’t renewed “We Were Liars” for another season. However, as mentioned above, there is a chance the show will run for multiple seasons, which means casting opportunities could pop up in the near future. To stay ahead of the latest listings, we suggest bookmarking our main casting page as it is updated frequently with the hottest gigs available now. For those looking for more audition advice, our guide on how to audition for Amazon Prime Video can help you prepare for your moment in the spotlight.

These casting roundups are also great for keeping an actor’s résumé fresh:

• The Best Gigs to Kick-Start Your Acting Career
• New York casting calls
• Background casting calls
• Nationwide casting calls
• Voiceover casting calls

Keep putting in the work. FitzGerald knew she wanted to be an actor at age 6—but that doesn’t mean the journey to success wasn’t littered with obstacles. “I did a play for school, and I knew my lines and everyone else’s lines. I was sort of doing a one-woman show with 17 other kindergarteners,” she told us. “It was that immediate.” 

But she added, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And that’s such an important thing, because a lot of young actors think if we’re not immediately brilliant, we’re not supposed to be doing it…. The notion of overnight stardom is really dangerous. For almost every person who has success in this business, there are years and years of hard work to get there. To have longevity, you really have to train and you really have to work.”

After all, she explained, “You never stop thinking about technique, but really, the reason we’re actors is because of the sheer joy of those few moments you get every now and again where you’re totally present. The rest is just struggle and misery.”

Learn about the world around you. When Morse was starting out, he helped launch the theater company Boston Rep, which afforded him the opportunity to try his hand at every role within the theater business. “The way we were able to survive was we all had different jobs in the theater. I did all the graphics and advertising, the newspaper advertising, the posters, all that stuff,” Morse explained. “By the time I got to doing movies, where everything is unionized, it was strange not to be picking up the light and putting it away, doing my own makeup or whatever.” 

But this approach helped him appreciate everything that goes into creating a given work, no matter the medium. “For anybody working, whether they’re a writer, producer, whatever you do, the more you know about that world, the better off you are and the more respect you have for the people you work with,” he said.

Do what makes you comfortable. Although not everyone has the luxury of choosing how they audition, for Lind, self-tapes are ideal. She embraces what makes her comfortable whenever possible. “I like taping for stuff. I don’t really like going into audition rooms if I don’t have to,” she told Glamour. “I was always someone that, when people met me, I always seemed older than my years, so they would assume I wouldn’t be able to play a character my age. So I like taping my auditions [to prevent those assumptions].”

Lind also noted she has traditions that help build confidence and get her mind in the right space. “I have a couple specific shirts I always like to wear, because I felt like I would wear them and I always got the role if I wore them,” she said. “My go-to food before auditions is avocado rolls and kombucha or coconut water. I always eat and drink that before auditions.”

Fall on your face—then get back up. Although it was hard at first, Gummer finally took this advice to heart. “I started really doing that thing that everybody tells you to do,” she told us. “Just treat an audition like an opportunity. This is your chance to just try stuff, try something. Have fun.” And while she wasn’t immune to rejection and dry spells, Gummer ultimately learned you must persevere. “You could fall flat on your face; but, so, you fall flat on your face? The next time you try and do something new and you think, What if I fall on my face? [Then] you think, Well, I’ve already done that.” 

She added, “Actors are not like dancers at the barre every day or singers practicing their scales. They’re serious sometimes and sometimes not. They drink a little and try and live the most they can—which I think is right! You’ve got to get hurt. You’ve got to experience joy and just be really fucking open to the elements.”