Stella (Lucy Hale) has spent the last 8 years believing that she’s going to die. Normally a show might end with this kind of a storyline, but for LIFE SENTENCE, death (or rather, the non-death) is actually just the beginning. In the pilot episode Stella actually learns that her cancer has been cured. But she’s done a lot of things in those 8 years, thinking that every day might be her last. And her family has buried a lot of their own problems from her, trying to give her supposedly short life as much joy as possible.
Now, however, Stella’s perfect little world is crumbling, in a way. Her family isn’t the picture perfect unit she thought it was. And it turns out she married a man she didn’t really know all that well. During a visit to the LIFE SENTENCE set in the fall, the cast of the new CW dramedy series spoke to us about this unusual show and where everyone finds themselves once the reality of their collective situation starts to set in.
The Premise. “I met with Erin and Rich who wrote the pilot, and they had said, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if the girl who was supposed to die ended up living, and she has to live with all these decisions and choices she made while she was dying?'” Lucy Hale said. “So I loved it. I initially thought it was such a great idea and something that I had never seen or heard before. It’s very interesting. Where we pick up in the pilot, you meet this girl who is pretty impulsive anyway. But if she’s living like she’s dying, she’s going to do some pretty crazy like marry a guy she’s known for three days in Paris. Who knows what else she’s gotten herself into? But we meet her, we find out she’s going to live, which is great news, but to realize that she has no idea who she is and no who her family really is, because they’ve been protecting her in this little bubble from the reality of their problems and the reality of the world. So when she finds out she’s going to live, it’s a bittersweet moment, because then at the same time, she realizes how insanely dysfunctional her family. That’s been so fun to dive into in the later episodes.”
Stella and Wes. As Lucy Hale said, Stella ended up marrying Wes, a British man that she met in Paris on vacation. And while they clearly love one another, they also barely know each other. In other words, their marriage is a bit of a fanstasy that now has to deal with real life. Elliot Knight explained that “when we meet in Paris, for Wes, he meets this amazing new life force of someone who has this whole perspective on living, existing, that he’s never encountered before. He is kind of stuck in his dead-end routine ways, and he’s kind of losing a sense of purpose and fulfillment and enjoyment in life, not to get too deep. Then he meets Stella, and she blows him away because she is just this amazing, magnetic, spontaneous creature who lights a fire inside of him. I think he, for the first time in his life, stops thinking and just goes straight for that feeling. That is very much the theme of their marriage and them as a couple together: it’s this burning fire that they’re both just dancing in and living in.”
But, Hale added that “when Stella realizes she’s going to live, she also realizes she knows not much about her husband. They realize how much they had never discovered, things they had never discovered about each other. So there are definitely some speed bumps. At the core of everything, they love each other so much, and there’s that childlike love that’s always there. Their chemistry and connection is just undeniable, so that’s what keeps them together. But there’s definitely a lot of learning and growing to do.”
The Dysfunctional Family. “Stella grew up believing that she had this perfect fairytale life and that everything was rainbows and glitters and unicorns and love always works out because why doesn’t it?” Hale said. “And so everything comes crashing down on her. Her bother [Aiden] and sister [Elizabeth/Lizzie] reveal to her that this is behind closed doors, this is not really what’s happening. It’s sort of a weird time for her because she’s discovering how relationships really work and that sometimes love falls apart and that sometimes your mom is bisexual. But it’s also a great time of self-discovery, not just for Stella but for Aiden as well. Everyone put their life on hold for Stella, so everyone’s kind of at this point like ‘well, where do we go now? For the last 8-10 years we’ve done everything for her’. So I think everyone’s a little confused on which road to go down. But it definitely leads to some arguments, some blow-outs. But at the end of the day, this family just really loves each other despite their flaws, despite everything. It’s really beautiful. It’s a cool little family.”
A Separation. As Hale mentioned, Stella’s mother (Ida) announces that her marriage to her husband (Peter) has to come to an end because she’s bisexual and wants to be with a woman. Gillian Vigman explained that this is “Ida’s turn to take a big deep dive into the unknown and to what she may have seen as forbidden as she was sort of a stay at home, conservative-ish mom and now she has this awakening and I think her daughter sort of gave her that push – to be like ‘I’m going to do this now, you are ok, I can really take this on and be in love with this woman and see where this goes’.” But does that mean her marriage is truly over?
Lizzie and Diego. Another married couple we’ll meet in LIFE SENTENCE is Lizzie (Stella’s sister) and her husband, Diego. Now that Stella is cured, “we get all these cracks in the family. We see all the dysfunction,” Brooke Lyons said. “But particularly with Lizzie, I think she’s drifting a little bit. She doesn’t know with to do. Are they best friends, like they were before Stella got sick? Is now Stella is a supporting role, where she supports Lizzie in her dreams? Because Lizzie has put all of her dreams on hold.” As for Diego, “I think Diego has always been dysfunctional. You know, we’re shooting episode 9 now, and it’s like every week, I’m learning more about the character as he’s being written. He’s kind of like me in the sense that he says whatever he’s thinking. And I think that’s what kind of gets him into a lot of trouble in his marriage, and, you know, with his friends. And I feel like that’s a dysfunction right there. I mean, he just [has] no censor,” Carlos PenaVega explained.
The Men of the Family Are a Mess. While Ida deals with her sexuality and Lizzie deals with her own issues and her marriage, both Aiden and Peter are feeling a bit adrift. Aiden is one of two siblings who felt a bit neglected as his parents focused all of their energy on making Stella’s life perfect, while Peter is dealing with money troubles and the loss of his wife. Jayson Blair explained that “there’s a lot of fun to be had with these two characters, because on screen, they’re so different. But in their core, they’re kind of the same person. They’re both a mess, and they just cover it with different ways. Aidan covers his pain with humor; Peter covers his pain with making everything better. So, as the series goes on, we kind of see how those two things complement each other and how they can kind of help each other out. There’s a lot of fun to be had with these guys.
LIFE SENTENCE premieres tonight (March 7) at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
