Thomas Doherty on ‘Tell Me Lies’ and Why He Identifies with His Character Leo

It’s not every day that your character punching out the show’s main male lead will get you stopped on the street in congratulations, but that’s the nature of Hulu’s “Tell Me Lies.” The series, which emerged as a breakaway hit with season one in 2022, features a cast of college students who make problematic choices one after the next, in a squirming but can’t stop watching manner. 

The show follows a group of college friends, mainly centered on Lucy and her relationship with a manipulative upperclassman, Stephen. The first season follows the many dramas of their relationship, and in season two Thomas Doherty is introduced as Leo, a new love interest for Lucy who has just returned from studying abroad.  

As the episodes rolled out, Doherty found himself getting stopped on the streets of New York with increasing frequency. 

“Everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m so happy that you punched Stephen.’ As if it was actually me,” Doherty says. “I’m like ‘You’re welcome guys, I got you.’”

Doherty, the 29-year-old Edinburgh native now based in New York, was a fan of the show’s first season, despite thinking Lucy, played by Grace Van Patten, was actually “the main girl from ‘Divergent.’” 

“I was like, oh, Shailene Woodley is doing a new Hulu show, that’s so sick. So I watched it and I was like, that’s not Shailene Woodley,” he says. “But I thought it was amazing. I loved the writing, I loved the cinematography, the way that it was shot, and there was such an amazing ensemble of younger actors.”

“I saw a lot of my younger self in Leo,” Doherty says of his character. “I think everyone goes through that college phase: you want to try and be a better person and do the right thing, but you have all these other external forces and peer pressures. I really enjoyed the fact that he was trying to improve himself as an individual and as a human. I thought that was really cool. But we’re all human. Sometimes we just have to punch someone’s face.”

Prior to “Tell Me Lies,” Doherty was best known for his role as Max in the reboot of “Gossip Girl,” another show about horny privileged youth creating drama. 

“Maybe I’ve just been type,” Doherty says with a laugh of the comparison. “I mean, it’s almost like an actual progression, isn’t it? ‘Tell Me Lies’ seems a lot more rooted in reality and literally, ‘Gossip Girl’ was high school, ‘Tell Me Lies’ is college, maybe I’ll play a character doing a f–king master’s degree, right? It’s good fun to play that.”

Doherty has loved acting for as long as he can remember, and describes himself as “very expressive” as a child. 

“My mom said that I wouldn’t stop moving in her stomach when she was pregnant with me,” he says. 

He studied theater for three years at The MGA Academy of Performing Arts in Edinburgh before venturing into the world of television and film.

“I love it, and what I love about it changes and it grows and goes in different directions, so you’re never settled in it,” he says. “It’s always changing and morphing into something else, which I love.”

With his next role he would love to take a stab at something new. 

“I think I’m definitely ready for the next challenge, be it on a bigger scale or in a more intimate way of the craft, if that makes sense,” Doherty says. “I guess [I want to] stretch my acting muscle — or flex my acting muscle? I’ll say stretch. We’ll find out if I can flex it.”