The true story behind ‘Tell Me Lies’ and the real Stephen

Hulu’s Tell Me Lies is the kind of messy, intoxicating drama that makes you sick to your stomach. 

The hit series follows Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White), a couple whose connection is magnetic but totally self-destructive. Even though their on-and-off romance can be exhausting to watch, it’s impossible to look away. Everyone around them also gets dragged into the storm, leaving friends and family caught in the middle long after the pair tries to move on with other people.

For anyone who’s ever dated a Stephen, Lucy, or just the wrong person, this story might hit a little too close to home. That said, viewers may wonder if this drama is based on true events. With season 3 now streaming, here’s what to know about Tell Me Lies‘ real-life inspiration.

Is Tell Me Lies based on a true story?

Tell Me Lies is based on Carola Lovering‘s 2018 bestselling novel of the same name, and while it’s technically fiction, the author confirmed that it pulls heavily from her experiences in a previous relationship.

In an April 2019 essay for The Cut, Lovering admitted she spent a long time dodging questions about whether Stephen was based on a real person. When asked if she was writing from experience, the writer would smile and give a carefully rehearsed answer, mainly because she “didn’t want to publicly rehash something that had been such a toxic situation in my life.”

What made it harder, Lovering wrote, was how many readers told her they’d dated someone just like Stephen. Still, she continued to deflect until playing it safe felt worse than telling the truth.

Ultimately, Lovering clarified that while Stephen isn’t a direct reflection of a real person, there was someone in her life who inspired him. “I’ve been so hesitant — and scared — to talk about the ‘real’ Stephen, because while there is certainly a person who inspired his character, that person isn’t actually the character,” she wrote. “And that is a distinction I need to keep intact.”

Who was the real-life Stephen?

Lovering has never named the man who inspired Stephen, but in her essay, she paints a clear picture of what he was like. When she was 23 and still living with her parents in Westchester, N.Y., she’d take the train into New York City to see him, even though he was living with a girlfriend at the time. Lovering knew it was messy and wrong, but she quietly accepted the situation.

He told her his girlfriend wasn’t “the one” — she was. And even though she knew better, Lovering couldn’t help being pulled into his orbit. “Behind the way he looked at me and spoke to me there was a magnet, an inexplicable compulsion, as vital as oxygen,” she wrote. “Being there with him, I was only obeying the urge to breathe.”

Their connection didn’t start there, though. Her fling with the real-life Stephen went all the way back to college, which eventually “morphed into his unabashed, almost manic pursuit of me.” From there, Lovering said she “became obsessed with the feeling of being wanted,” and even after finding out there were other women, she convinced herself that his persistence and commitment meant something deeper.

Like Lucy on Tell Me Lies, Lovering went through a relentless cycle of leaving and returning. She’d swear she was done, only for the real-life Stephen to reappear with promises to change and hints of a future together that somehow still felt possible.

“The draw was simple: I’d never met anyone else who made me feel alive the way he always had,” Lovering wrote. “There were other girls, yes. There was prevalent dishonesty. There was drama. But relationships were supposed to be complicated. Nothing good ever came without its hurdles… I’d become an expert at telling myself what I wanted to hear, at finding circumstantial evidence to back my claim.”

How did Lovering’s relationship with her “Stephen” end?

Lovering called her relationship with her Stephen a “vicious cycle,” and in the end, he was the one who walked away, not her.

Even though she was utterly devastated, a small part of her saw it as a kind of gift. “That tiny piece of myself is the person I fought my way back toward, the corner of my heart I willed to swallow the rest whole,” she said. 

Writing Tell Me Lies became part of Lovering’s journey to rediscover herself: “What allowed me to heal, I think, was this commitment to introspection,” she explained. 

She added, “For me, this meant sitting down in front of a blank Word document, cursor blinking. Joan Didion famously said, ‘I don’t know what I think until I write it down.’ Writing Tell Me Lies was like that for me; I had to create a fictitious person on paper in order to finally understand him. He revealed himself to me as Stephen: the fickle, alluring charmer with a spine-melting touch, who always says the right thing, even if it’s a lie.”

Lovering also noted that a this kind of relationship isn’t just her story; it’s a story many people know. “As humiliating as it is to acknowledge the weakest versions of ourselves — the selves we willingly debased — there is wisdom and connection to be found there, too,” she wrote. “In full transparency I did have a Stephen, and he was horrible. But it’s okay. It got me here.”

Where can I watch Tell Me Lies?

Tell Me Lies is available to stream on Hulu.

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