David Morse: 'We Were Liars' is modern-day 'King Lear'

UPI

18-06-2025

1 of 5 | "We Were Liars" -- starring left to right Caitlin FitzGerald, David Morse, Wendy Crewson, Mamie Gummer and Candice King -- premieres Wednesday. Photo courtesy of Prime Video
NEW YORK, June 18 (UPI) -- The Last Thing He Told Me, Outsiders and John Adams actor David Morse says he sees a glimmer of William Shakespeare's doomed patriarch King Lear in Harris Sinclair, the character he plays in the new series We Were Liars.
The adaptation of E. Lockhart's best-selling young adult novel premieres on Prime Video Wednesday. It follows teen Cadence Sinclair Eastman (Emily Alyn Lind), who summers with her cousins and friends on her grandfather Harris' New England private island.
Vying for Harris' attention are his adult daughters Bess (Candice King), Penny (Caitlin FitzGerald) and Carrie (Mamie Gummer).
"It was hard not to see it that way a little bit, not that I could really go down that road, but it definitely had those parallels, especially because he's -- and it's one of the reasons I wanted to do this and nobody in the story knows it -- but he has dementia in the future," Morse, 71, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"He can feel it coming and there's a kind of a clock ticking for him," the actor said. "There's things that he wants to get done before he's really gone and it makes him very vulnerable and touching to me and unexpected in a character like this. So, in that way, I suppose it's like King Lear."
Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass and Haunting of Bly Manor alum Rahul Kohi, 39, plays Carrie's boyfriend Ed, while Shubham Maheshwari portrays Gat, Ed's nephew and Cadence's love interest.
Ed is one of the only men in the family to hold his own with Harris and his daughters.
"They're the best of friends," Kohi quipped about Ed and his demanding future father-in-law.
"They're very similar. They're both protecting their families in very different ways. Harris is, obviously, the way he is through wanting to protect his family and Ed endures what he endures from Harris in order to protect his family. So, they're kind of mirroring each other, but coming at it from different ways."
One reason they clash, however, is their perspectives on wealth.
Harris has always had money and takes it for granted, while Ed and Gat know how hard it is for regular folk to live without it.
"It's been a part of his life for so long," Morse said about his millions.
"His daughters do not handle their wealth well and he really has a hard time with that because he feels he has taken care of it extremely well and expected them to do the same and they have not done the same," he added.
"So, he's actually looking for someone to do a better job with it and he focuses on Cadence, who is the central character in the story."
A bit of an outsider who is always trying to prove himself, Ed is wary when Gat begins a romance with Cadence.
"Gat, in some way, could be potentially walking the same path as Ed," Kohi said.
"Ed's not his father, obviously. He's his nephew, but I feel like, at this point, with what Gat's going through, it felt the most fatherly Ed had to become in order to help him navigate what he was going through, through an experience that, obviously, Ed is dealing with himself."
Kohi said he was excited about his scenes with Maheshwari from the show's table read until the cameras started rolling.
"Those kind of 'Rocky Balboa' pep talks were some of my favorite to do," he added. "I remember the table reads. They were great. They went down well and I was really excited to film them and they exceeded my expectations."