Can you see me now?!
SPEAKER: Angela...
♪ (EERIE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
ROBERTO AGUIRRE-SACASA: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin
is a story about generational trauma.
We reveal slowly, or not so slowly even,
when the mothers were teenagers, they were the mean girls.
They were the villains, they were the bullies,
and we're going to unpack the repercussions of that decades later.
(TRAIN HORN HONKS)
Our version of
is set in Millwood.
And it is very much a blue collar,
down on its luck town.
Lindsay and I respond to this idea of timelessness.
We really wanted to make sure everything felt old.
That nothing was too new.
That nothing had been too updated or refurbished.
That the town was a bit, sort of, lost in time
in the same way that our moms were in the '90s.
DAVID GINSBERG:
they're great looking towns,
and they kind of have a mountainous backdrop.
It was still attractive,
but everything sort of had a bit of an age on it.
(AIRHORNS BLARING)
ROBERTO:
We meet not our Little Liars,
but their mothers as teenage girls.
We catch a glimpse of what the original sin is,
the tragic death of this outcast named Angela Waters.
And that's sort of our homage to so many horror movies
which begin where you meet some of the characters,
but not necessarily the main characters.
(ALL SCREAMING)
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
The opening sequence was obviously the first thing that I read.
And I was hooked from that moment
because of how it was written.
It was written with a lot of the camera moves inspired a la
We did 25 takes of that opening sequence.
Special effects blowing snow
and trying to move out of the way,
just in time for camera.
A lot of choreography.
NEIL PATEL:
with flashing lights, like we've seen.
There's old cars and there's junk.
We painted banners of scenes from
Everyone thinks of Y2K,
and everyone was worried about technology,
but this is a more analog throwback to, like,
19th century imagery, which was really fun.
I knew that it was horror,
but I didn't really expect it to be as slasher-y as it got.
And it was so incredible and so exciting.
We wanted to dynamic, we wanted it scary,
we wanted to really be able to be bold,
to say, "This is what this show is."
(HYPERVENTILATING)
-SPEAKER 2:
Imogen Adams!
-(CHEERING) -There she is!
LINDSAY CALHOON BRING:
the thing I always come back to
and the thing I always think about is
It's the most iconic horror moment
in a horror movie that I can think of.
KERI LEDERMAN:
So for us, it was kind of fun to recreate that.
But it really took a long time to dress set.
It was a very big space.
The thing that was important to us was having a subversion.
And what would it look like if the bully doesn't get the win,
but the bully gets what's coming to her in A's eyes?
(SCREAM ECHOES)
The first two episodes are bookended
with a tragic fall from the rafters.
We smash to black,
and then pick up with the aftermath of that.
(COMMOTION)
We did spare our audience the truly gruesome
bone-breaking moment of impact,
to make those other reveals resonate a bit more.
We wanted something that felt incredible uncomfortable and horrifying.
I remember sitting inside with makeup,
and she articulated the legs.
As soon as everyone started going "Oh..."
That's the response that we wanted.
ROBERTO:
almost as important as what you see
is what you don't see.
(SCREAMING)
One of the things that we're trying to do is,
is there a way to break the bullying cycle
in a different way than it is broken in, say, something like
Karen, you didn't deserve what happened to you.
Though you barely acknowledged my existence,
I wish we would have found a way to... coexist.
(WIND HOWLS)
One of the most primal emotions that we as humans can experience
is fear.
When you're a teenager,
you start to see the world for what it really is,
as a dangerous place.
I think that's why horror and teenagers go so well,
and it's sort of a cauldron for all of those themes.
ZARIA:
because it's flavored in those different ways,
because we bring our own perspectives
and our own past to these roles.
The omnipresence of A is very frightening.
MALIA PYLES:
and always being listened to
makes the girls retreat ever deeper into their secrets.
BAILEE MADISON:
and psychological horror from A,
they can't have their eyes closed at night and feel safe.
And they can't have their eyes open and feel safe either.
We are so dead.