Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa talks Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa will also be at the helm of HBO Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. Five years after the Freeform drama ended, HBO Max’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is a new chapter for Pretty Little Liars. 

Following a new group of lying teenage girls, “A” is at it again, targeting a group with creepy messages and warnings. However, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is very much its own story, taking on a much darker approach to the mysterious “A” and the liars the series focuses on.

Culturess: What can viewers expect from “A?”

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: This is a very different version of “A” if you’ve seen the original series. This “A” is kind of a classic slasher horror villain modeled on the likes of Jason from Friday the 13th and Michael Myers from Halloween, and Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street. 

So, “A” is a very different kind of beast and a very different kind of villain than in the original PLL, which I think makes sense because Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is different from the original Pretty Little Liars in that it is a true slasher horror show and a love letter to those movies from the seventies and eighties that Lindsay, my co-creator, Lindsay Calhoon Bring, and I really love and wanted to explore and be a dialogue with.

Culturess: What was interesting to you about aligning the show with the horror genre?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: It’s funny; I think teenagers and horror just go so well together for some reason. Youthful audiences love teen shows, and they love horror. So much about being a teenager can be horrific. One of the things that we were really excited about was that we wanted to find these characters, these five little liars, and we wanted to give them a horror movie villain, a horror movie threat, and horror movie danger.

But, we also wanted to explore just kind of the daily horrors of moving through the world right now in 2022, 2021, being a young woman moving through the world where there are villains and dangers everywhere you look. So, we wanted a pop culture horror movie horror, and then we wanted sort of more grounded social daily horrors, if that makes sense, and we could kind of draw a connection between those two different genres.

Culturess: This is a very dark tone. What does that say about the storylines that Original Sin is willing to tell?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: I think when we were thinking about the show, when we were gathering in the writer’s room, we wanted to tell meaningful, personal stories. We wanted to explore even ideas of trauma and generational traumas. A big part of the series is the sins of the mothers being visited upon the daughters. We wanted to explore the messiness and the ugliness of some of the things our characters do.

It is darker in that we get into some disturbing subject manner, and things like that, and we really tried to be non-exploitative. We tried to keep things grounded and tasteful and be sensitive around it. But we did want to tell real stories that we hoped would resonate with real people watching it so that it wasn’t so heightened it would just kind of slide off your back.

Culturess: Why will viewers love this iteration of characters and the story?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: For me, I think you fall in love with the characters, and I think you fall in love with these actors, these actresses. I think the five actresses that we have playing the little liars, Bailee, Chandler, Malia, Zaria, Maia, they are stars. Each one of them could headline their own show. We’re so lucky they’re all a part of this show.

But, I think, for me, a television show is successful, and a television show connects with an audience when you want to spend time with the characters. Whatever the story is, if you don’t want to spend time with the characters, you are not watching that television show. I think with these actors, in particular, and these beautiful characters, I think you just want to go on the ride with them, and you’re rooting for them. So, I think for me, that’s the sort of secret ingredient.

Culturess: You have secrets with the parents. You have secrets with the teenagers. Are there gonna be tensions rising between them as they’re trying to keep the other away from what’s going on?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: When you’re a kid, you have certain ideas of who your parents are, and you look at them a certain way. As you yourself are becoming an adult, you reach a point in your life where you see your parents differently, and you see them as human, and you see them as fallible.

One of the things that is important to us in this show is that this show is zeroing in on that moment when these girls are becoming young adults, and they’re seeing their parents, specifically their mothers, for who they were in the past. That’s the tension that’s keeping alive in the show, that very universal journey of “oh, this is what my parents really are like,” if that makes sense.

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, July 28th.