Grace Van Patten comes to this place for magic: the Big 5 Sporting Goods in Studio City. With its uninviting, gas-station-white exterior, it looks like the kind of place HAIM might stroll past in a music video without a second thought. But inside, it\u2019s home to some of the actor\u2019s favorite Los Angeles memories.<\/p>\n
Like the time she purchased a pair of Heelys in a stroke of childlike whimsy. \u201cI had my birthday party at the house and by the end of the night, everyone was taking turns putting on Heelys and dancing in the middle of a circle,\u201d she says as we stroll the aisles one afternoon a few days before Christmas. Or the time she bought baseball pants in an ill-fated attempt at starting a new trend: <\/strong>\u201cI thought that I could bring them back. Not that they were ever\u2026 there.\u201d<\/p>\n At the counter, the 29-year-old star of Hulu\u2019s Tell Me Lies<\/em> spots a massive tub of Big League Chew<\/a>, the shredded bubble gum brand she\u2019d snack on during her childhood basketball games, and holds it up reverently. \u201cBeing here feels like the beginning of the school year and you\u2019re getting all the apparel for the sports teams you\u2019ve joined,\u201d she says as the cashier rings up a bounty that includes Tiger Balm and Boost Oxygen canisters. \u201cIt gives me butterflies!\u201d<\/p>\n Dressed in a look we\u2019ll call Heated Rivalry<\/em> chic \u2014 an Adidas x Gosha Rubchinskiy track jacket, baggy gray jeans, a pair of wrap-around Ed Hardy sunglasses she thrifted in Toronto \u2014 Van Patten tells me acting and athletics aren\u2019t so different. \u201cBeing on a set is a team sport. Everyone needs to be on their game to make a good product, and everyone needs each other. I think people forget that,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be this collaborative team, but in a lot of situations it becomes an every-man-for-himself type of thing. So when other actors want to rehearse or think about the story in addition to just their<\/em> arc, that\u2019s when the best work gets made.\u201d<\/p>\n A Tribeca native, Van Patten found her calling at New York City\u2019s prestigious LaGuardia performing high school \u2014 where she counted Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, Lourdes Leon, and Ansel Elgort as classmates \u2014 after discovering it had a basketball team. (\u201cTimmy is a good friend of mine. I was in the audience for all of his rap performances, which were incredible,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like such a proud mom for every person from LaGuardia that\u2019s doing well. It gets me so pumped up.\u201d) For a bunch of artsy kids, she swears, the team was actually pretty good. \u201cIt was a great escape from just acting for the rest of the day,\u201d the former shooting guard says. \u201cIt was the only part that made me feel like I was at a normal high school.\u201d<\/p>\n Normal days are rarer now for Van Patten. By the time we stop for lunch, it hasn\u2019t even been 24 hours since the trailer for Tell Me Lies<\/em>\u2019 third season dropped, yet every teenage girl at Joan\u2019s on Third already seems to have already watched it based on how many approach our table. Posing for sweaty selfies between bites of curry chicken salad has been par for the course ever since Tell Me Lies<\/em> premiered in 2022 and cemented Van Patten as television\u2019s best wearer of low-rise jeans since Mischa Barton.<\/p>\n \u201cGrace is not trying to be a celebrity. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s dying to do Subway Takes<\/i>. She\u2019s not doing Get Ready With Me\u2019s. She doesn\u2019t lay it all out.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n An adaptation of Carola Lovering\u2019s novel of the same name, the show follows the tortured relationship between college classmates Lucy (Van Patten) and Stephen (Jackson White) across eight years of mutually assured destruction. (Van Patten and White also date in real life.) The show was an immediate hit, but enthusiasm for it has reached a fever pitch ahead of this season (premiering Jan. 13), likely thanks to TikTok, where the show\u2019s veneer of a CW-esque young adult drama \u2014 supercharged with HBO-level, firmly adult sex scenes \u2014 has hooked BookTokers and the platform\u2019s most ardent smut-lovers alike. To date, the Season 3 trailer has racked up more than 19 million views on TikTok alone.<\/p>\n Though endlessly gracious, Van Patten isn\u2019t entirely comfortable with all the newfound attention. Our interview is her first in-person one for a major outlet, and when I turn my recorder on, she tenses. \u201cThe slim chance of being famous has almost pushed me to stop [acting],\u201d Van Patten admits. \u201cIt terrifies me to be under the spotlight like that. It\u2019s probably my own insecurities and fear of people knowing too much about me. My main focus is just to act.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Karah Preiss, who co-produces Tell Me Lies <\/em>with Emma Roberts under their Belletrist Productions banner, it\u2019s this exact quality that made her the perfect fit. \u201cOriginally there had been a discussion of Emma playing Lucy, but what works so well about Grace playing the lead is that Grace is anonymous. This was the role she was born to play, but it\u2019s also just a role that she’s great at playing because Grace can kind of do anything,\u201d Preiss says. \u201cI think what\u2019s confusing is that Grace looks like a movie star \u2026 People look at her and they\u2019re like, \u2018Why isn’t she as famous as Sydney Sweeney?\u2019 The reality is she\u2019s not trying to be a celebrity. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s dying to do Subway Takes<\/em>; she\u2019s not doing Get Ready With Me\u2019s. She doesn\u2019t lay it all out.\u201d<\/p>\n Walking down Ventura with Van Patten, there\u2019s no sign of Lucy\u2019s dead-eyed menace or the dissociative pout the actor so effortlessly commands in photo shoots like the one accompanying this story. Instead, her nose-wrinkling smile radiates such a genuine steadiness that I find myself joking that she\u2019s probably never had to take SSRIs before. (She hasn\u2019t.) Later, I ask if she\u2019s ever felt really down bad in a relationship, like Lucy, and she laughs: \u201cNo! But it\u2019s not too late!\u201d<\/p>\n So what\u2019s her secret to being so well-adjusted? At this, Van Patten delivers the perfect PSA for every \u201care you mad at me\u201d girlie out there. \u201cWhen I\u2019m sitting there feeling really anxious and really bad for myself, [I remember] that no one else is thinking of me,\u201d Van Patten says earnestly. \u201cNot in a bad way, but it\u2019s not personal. There\u2019s this attention and indulgence you\u2019re giving to yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur approach to our relationship is we\u2019re not going to flaunt anything and we\u2019re not going to hide anything.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If her life sounds pretty peachy, well, she won\u2019t argue with that. \u201cI\u2019m not going to defend that, ever. I have been so unbelievably lucky with a lot of things,\u201d she says. Among those many gifts is a family steeped in showbiz. Her father is television director Tim Van Patten, who\u2019s worked on shows like Touched by an Angel, The Sopranos,<\/em> and Boardwalk Empire<\/em>. (Van Patten made her on-screen debut in an episode of The Sopranos<\/em> at age 8.) Her younger sister Anna Van Patten is also an actor \u2014 the two even played sisters last year in Hulu\u2019s true-crime drama The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox<\/em>, which starred the elder Van Patten as the American college student wrongfully imprisoned for murder in Italy in 2007 (a performance The Guardian<\/em> called \u201cunreservedly brilliant\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cJust knowing that I have their love and support makes me have a lot less fear of being rejected by jobs, by people, by whatever,\u201d she says. \u201cThat just gives me a lot of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Being so close to the entertainment industry at a young age also gave her useful perspective. \u201cThe actors my dad had around that became really close to our family \u2014 like Edie Falco and James Gandolfini \u2014 these people who were very mega-famous, their number one priority was life and family first,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I do think being exposed to those types of people and artists made me want that. I saw all these people who were only in it for the art and not anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s White, who\u2019s been with her for the entire ride. The two began dating during the audition process, before the show even premiered. \u201cWe\u2019ve had the same schedule for the past four years. When we\u2019re working, it\u2019s lined up. When we\u2019re not working, it\u2019s lined up,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s been really nice to go through that with someone, having the same anxieties and talking each other through it. We both handle it in different ways, but it\u2019s the same anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n Raised in a similar milieu \u2014 White\u2019s mother is Married… with Children<\/em> actor Katey Sagal, who has cameoed on Tell Me Lies<\/em> as his on-screen mom; his grandfather was also a television director \u2014 the two also share a similar stance on public life. \u201cOur approach to [our relationship] is we\u2019re not going to flaunt anything and we\u2019re not going to hide anything. We\u2019re going to live our lives the way we would if we weren\u2019t on a show together because the second you start making those adjustments and accepting it, that\u2019s when I\u2019d start to feel really strange about life,\u201d Van Patten says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe slim chance of being famous almost pushed me to stop acting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cI\u2019d so much rather be who I am and live my life how I live it and not adapt because now this part of me is under the microscope,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s easy because even if we were never on the show together, I wouldn\u2019t be posting a million posts about my boyfriend.\u201d The algorithm hasn\u2019t forced us to learn about them, nor are they feeding it. Even their Instagram \u201chard launch\u201d was in service to their careers: \u201cIf we kiss can we get a s2 @hulu,\u201d White captioned a photo of the pair touching tongues<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their off-screen romance is a sharp contrast to the toxic dynamic their characters play out on screen. Over the first seasons of Tell Me Lies<\/em>, the pair have committed all kinds of betrayals: Lucy sleeps with his best friend; Stephen basically dumps her in the middle of a Hawaiian-themed frat party. Van Patten and White have talked a lot in their down time about what keeps drawing them back together.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Lucy\u2019s mind, there\u2019s this weird connection they have where they can be their worst selves with each other and they don\u2019t judge each other, which is so f*cked up, but they cannot surprise each other,\u201d Van Patten says, offering her armchair diagnosis. \u201cThey know what both are capable of, and when they choose to be together, they\u2019re choosing to accept all parts of each other. No one else will accept them.\u201d<\/p>\n When we reunite with the characters in Season 3, they\u2019re back together and have vowed to \u201cbe nice to each other this time.\u201d But don\u2019t expect it to last: Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer has promised off-the-charts \u201cdepressed pervert\u201d<\/a> energy as a recording of Lucy \u2014 in which she confesses more secrets and betrayals \u2014 threatens to unravel her relationship and blow up her life.<\/p>\n \u201cMeaghan would describe [filming the tape] as a hostage scene and it really feels like that. Watching it, you realize how much power [Stephen] really has over her in that moment,\u201d Van Patten says. Roberts has said she wanted to make the show because, at that point in her life, she hadn\u2019t been in a relationship that \u201cwasn\u2019t a thriller.\u201d<\/a> This season, it stops being a metaphor.<\/p>\n \u201cUp until this point, it\u2019s been all mind games,\u201d Van Patten continues. \u201cBut from the tape on, there is something tangible that he could literally ruin her life with. It spins the whole show into this very active panic that\u2019s different from every other season.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a big creative swing \u2014 but with Van Patten as team captain, Preiss never worries. \u201cThere\u2019s a saying that whenever #1 on the call sheet is a pro, it brings up the rest of the show. She\u2019s just a person who\u2019s not looking to be, for lack of a better word, a dick on set,\u201d Preiss says. \u201cShe shows up on time, knows her lines, and is a person that when she has to cry in a scene she cries in the first take. I think her aptitude for the craft itself makes everybody want to be a better actor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019m sitting there feeling really anxious and bad for myself, I remember no one else is thinking of me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When I relay this compliment to Van Patten later, she is touched \u2014 but also finds it a little funny. \u201cIt always surprises me because inside my head it\u2019s moving a mile a minute, so I must have a good poker face or something,\u201d she says. Staying steely under pressure is, of course, the hallmark of an athlete. Van Patten also credits her dad: \u201cI\u2019ve seen my dad on set recently with a million extras, the most chaotic day you could ever imagine, and he was so cool, calm, and collected,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThen when he got home, he was like, \u2018That was crazy<\/em>.\u2019 But he held it together for the people around him.\u201d<\/p>\n She searches for a deeper answer. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to have that quality as a director because people really look at you like a host,\u201d she says. \u201cI just have to be a good host so people feel safe and comfortable.\u201d Then she pauses, before settling for something simpler: \u201cIt\u2019s just being nice. I think it\u2019s really easy to be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n Top image credit: Gucci clothing and belt, Roberto Cavalli vintage bra from The Archive X Yana, Laura Lombardi earrings<\/em> <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imgix.bustle.com\/uploads\/image\/2026\/1\/6\/cf38e8bf\/5-film-0009.jpg?w=375&h=460&fit=crop&crop=faces&dpr=2\")
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