'We Were Liars' star Mamie Gummer is happy to move on from 'the ingenue' or 'the girl' roles, into deeper work

Yahoo

11-07-2025

In recent weeks, Mamie Gummer has been riding the wave of fandom that came along with the release of the successful Prime Video series We Were Liars, based on the novel by E. Lockhart. Starring alongside Candice King, Caitlin FitzGerald, Emily Alyn Lind, David Morse, Rahul Kohli, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada and Shubham Maheshwari, Gummer is an absolute force on screen, making a big impact in her portrayal of the complex character Carrie Sinclair.
"It's really satisfying to know that we made something intended for people to see and that they're seeing it, because that doesn't always happen," Gummer told Yahoo. The series is still the most popular show on Prime Video.
"I'm always so grateful for anything messy and complicated, and I'm kind of relieved to seem to be aging out of 'the girl' roles, and things are deepening now and becoming more nuanced. I think the fact that this project was crafted by women entirely, for the most part, was significant, and that it was always going to be a multi-dimensional experience."
A core part of what makes Carrie such an interesting character is that she has this rebellious spirit, but as we see with how she dealt with the scandal surrounding her son, she feels she needs the patriarchal structure that she's been raised in, under her father Harris (David Morse). It's those layers in the character that Gummer really effectively, and beautifully, pulled out in We Were Liars that felt so engrossing to watch.
"You kind of meet everyone at an inflection point, a time of crisis," Gummer said. "Carrie, out of the rest of the family, has this kind of renegade spirit and has faced the consequences of challenging that particular, as you said, patriarchal power structure, and has experienced the high cost of doing so, and has been kept caged in by that and is compromised by it, on a really deep level."
Gummer added that there's also an interesting and tragic "crossover" between Carrie and Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind), the character that leads us through the story setup as a tale of Cadence trying to find out the circumstances that led to her traumatic head injury, and resulting memory loss.Gummer left the We Were Liars fans in shock at the end of season, particularly those who haven't read Lockhart's books, with the final moments showing Carrie relapse as she's secretly taking pills in the family's Beechwood home. And it's at that moment that she sees the ghost of her son Johnny (Joseph Zada). When she says she thought he "left," he responds by saying, "I don't think I can." Revealing that Cadence isn't the only one who's seeing the ghosts of their dead family members.
"I had always known that moment was coming, so I sort of had been straddling two or three different realities, which was challenging, and also really fun as an actor, to have so many secrets and such a wealth of backstory," Gummer said about the show's ending. "And to hold all that awareness, but keep it under wraps, it was kind of a great relief and release ... to pull back the curtain a bit on everything that had been kept locked away, both in the story and also within what I tried to do performance wise."
But a real highlight throughout We Were Liars are those scenes between Carrie and Johnny. There's so much emotional impact that both Gummer and Joseph Zada brought to those moments that felt particularly special in a show that does already have so much drama and complexity with its characters.
"There's so many parallels [Lockhart] and [co-showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie] and all the writers painstakingly drew out," Gummer said. "Johnny's character is also very reminiscent of a person, [a formative relationship for Carrie], he shares a lot of the qualities, and so I think that binds her to him in a way that predates his birth even."
"They were sort of destined to be intrinsically connected always, and by saving him I think she feels like she might be able to retroactively resurrect some stuff that she's had to contend with in her youth, and failed. I think that she also doesn't know how to take care of herself very well. I don't know that she trusts herself entirely as a mother, but she is so devoted to trying. I love anyone who just tries with all their might, even if they get it wrong over and over and over again."
Fans are anticipating that the We Were Liars series will continue with Lockhart's prequel, which is focused on Carrie and her sisters when they were younger. Gummer actually read the books in chronological order, which meant she had a lot of details about her character in her mind crafting Carrie for We Were Liars. The actor stated that she hopes there is the opportunity to explore the prequel story, an origin story for the sisters, and the trauma bond established in their younger years.
Gummer also celebrated how well each character in We Were Liars was crafted, particularly the women, whether they're teen characters or adults in the show, adding that the process was very collaborative.
"Isn't it nice? ... And from the get, when I met with [co-showrunners] Carina and Julie [Plec], it was over Zoom, and it was a conversation and it was a collaboration, which is not always the case in the nature of the industry and how things have changed," Gummer said. "You often make a tape in your closet and then, more or less, kind of chuck it out the window and say a prayer. ... There's not a lot of feedback."
"And so I knew that it was going to be a very worthwhile endeavour, and one of mutual respect, and I loved that."
While Gummer has seen great success on screen, from We Were Liars to True Detective, The Good Wife and Ricki and the Flash, the actor would love to continue to do more theatre, after giving a sensational performance in the off-broadway play Ugly Lies the Bone in 2015, a story about a newly discharged soldier who returns home to Florida, using virtual reality video game therapy to provide relief from the physical and mental pain of the experience in Afghanistan. Gummer's other theatre credits include Our Very Own Carlin McCullough, Uncle Vanya and The Water's Edge.
"I would love nothing more," Gummer said about doing more theatre work. "It's my favourite place to be."
"And it's funny, I just saw Lindsey Ferrentino and Patricia [McGregor], who directed [Ugly Lies the Bone], when I was in New York, and we were just scheming about trying to mount that again, do it again. It was such a great piece. I love them all so much."
In terms of what made Ugly Lies the Bone feel like a special show, Gummer said she just felt the "fire."
"It just took a hold over me. ... I was at a place in my life where I was really ready to just hurl myself at something, no matter the cost or the sciatica that resulted from it," she said.
"I'm always more interested in process than product. Like even if three people see something great, it feels just as if not more rewarding than the opposite."
Another project that felt particularly special for Gummer was the limited-time performance Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters with her siblings, Grace Gummer, Louisa Jacobson and Henry Wolfe. While Gummer is someone who gets lots of questions about working with her family members, including her mother Meryl Streep, there was something "sacred" about doing the Three Sisters workshop and performances in this limited capacity.
"It was just cosmically and creatively so fulfilling, and I think it was because it was only ever going to be just what it was," Gummer said. "It was a meta exercise too, because Louisa really led the charge on that, which is very fitting for her character, and we all sort of reluctantly fell in line, but she was so right. So the baby became the boss. ... I think we were all sort of surprised by it and what we gained from doing it."
"But that having been said, I don't know that we would do it again, because none of us wants to, I don't know, exploit the art. What is so sacred, what we hold so closely. So it was always going to have to be kind of an intimate exercise, experience."
Looking forward in her career, Gummer is ready to move into possibly crafting her own projects to work on, and maybe specifically for live performances.
"I'm feeling a little bold, ... now that I've clawed my way out of the ingenue thing, and I kind of want to start ... building stuff from the bottom," Gummer said. "There's an idea that I have to do [Chekov's] The Seagull, but to make ... the main character into a woman, and make Nina like a hunky young actor guy."
"I feel that theatre, in particular, might really have a great resurgence, as we're seeing in live music and real life communion, being around people. You don't even have to necessarily talk to them, but just to feel ... our humanity sort of reaffirmed I think is going to be more and more important."