Costa D'Angelo On Why Alex's Tell Me Lies Ending Is "Really Tragic"
"It's his worst possible nightmare."
Alex claimed that he doesn’t do love when he was introduced on Tell Me Lies in its final season, but it didn’t take long for viewers to fall for Costa D’Angelo’s complicated character. Over the course of the season, Alex’s backstory is slowly and subtly revealed. There are no flashbacks to Alex’s childhood abuse in foster homes, which is something D’Angelo appreciated about how the series handled this trauma.
“I think the subtlety, it's less is more sometimes, especially in this case with how sensitive the topic is,” D’Angelo says. “He’s come out of something so heartbreaking and hard to escape. I love Alex so much, so I wish people could have gotten more of an insight into his life, but subtlety is key in this. Things are unveiled slowly with this character.”
Knowing about Alex’s past from the start informed how D’Angelo wanted his character to interact with both his childhood friend Bree, as well as Lucy, whom Alex assumes has been through similar abuse. “In his head, he, Bree, and Lucy are all the same,” D’Angelo says. “The reason he never approached Bree before at college is his way of protecting her. If she doesn’t remember him, he doesn’t want to bring back those memories. He wants to let her move on with her life.”
With Lucy, Alex believes he’s found someone he can truly relate to for the first time. “Maybe I can break my rule for someone who knows what real life is,” D’Angelo says. “She's not just another college kid. And then that's all the more painful for Alex when he learns that she lied. For the first time in his life as an adult man, he opened himself up to someone, [and] it all came shattering down. It’s heartbreaking.”
I know in my head what happens [to Alex], but I think I'm going to keep that to myself.
In the series finale, Alex ends his relationship with Lucy after learning she lied about being sexually assaulted. "It's his worst possible nightmare,” D’Angelo says. “That hurts him so much because that's something he's been through. His whole world is shattered. It’s a really tragic ending. And we don't know what happens to him. He's not at the wedding. I know in my head what happens, but I think I'm going to keep that to myself.”
As D’Angelo points out, Alex is completely absent from the 2015 flash-forward. So, his final scene in the series is a tough full-circle moment with Bree, in which he warns her to never fully trust anybody.
“It ends with him back to where he was when he and Bree were children,” D’Angelo says. “If they were getting taken away from each other as children, he would’ve told her these same things. That might be the last time they ever speak to each other at the end of that episode, and he's giving her that advice again.”
