Tell Me Lies' Jackson White Reveals If He Worked with Real-Life Mom Katey Sagal to Create Stephen's Backstory with Her

Hulu’s hit series Tell Me Lies returns for season two with 2 new episodes on September 4.

What you may not know is, Jackson White, who portrays Stephen on the series, is the son of actress Katey Sagal, who portrays Stephen’s mom on the show.

In the series, they have a very strained relationship with Katey‘s character being incredibly manipulative. Stephen has obviously been impacted by his upbringing, and it shows with his character’s decisions throughout season one as well.

In season one, there’s a memorable episode where Stephen goes home for Christmas and he’s visibly having a tough time.

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Ahead of season 2, Deadline asked Jackson about that episode and working with his mom. He shared he was “so grateful” for the Christmas episode.

He responded, “Yeah. Just that dynamic. I thought [showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer] just lined that up so accurately and it just gave me a total fuel for what’s going on with him….I’ve never done a Season 2 either. And I was really nervous to show back up and do it. And I remember the first day the cameras were on us and I was sweating, I was really nervous, I was like, oh, how do I do this guy again? He’s so locked up, and mysterious, and what’s going on with him, and how do I f—ing play that? And then it kind of just worked in the favor of the story because Stephen is trying to figure out if he’s a good person, or if he’s a bad person, or if he’s done bad things. That’s his wrestling match this season. And all the nerves I had about that influenced it. I was able to just be in my head about that. That was just the question going the whole time is, am I a sociopath? Did I make a mistake? Just that inner monologue.”

He was then asked if he worked with his mom off-screen to build a backstory.

Jackson shared, “Yeah, I didn’t have to prep anything. It was really potent. It was there. But yeah, like I said, it influences everything. That’s enough for him to go nuts. She was great in that.”

Find out which actor seems to have exited Tell Me Lies after season 1.