For Oliver Goldstick, it's a haunting scene from season two of 'Pretty Little Liars' that still resonates with him.
No one loves a great scene more than the person who first
dreamed it up -- the writer. We're asking iconic shows' creators and writers to
tell ET all about getting to see their most cherished moment
on their series make it from script to screen.
For Oliver Goldstick, creator of Amazon’s new period
drama, The Collection, it’s his
work on an earlier show, Pretty Little Liars, which still haunts him to
this day. The scene, from season two, plays on the fears that many of us have
while serving as a template for the emotional and suspenseful moments to come
in the five seasons to follow. While the story of five girls terrorized by a
mysterious villain named “A” is very different from The Collection,
which focuses on one Parisian family’s attempt to restore the city’s supremacy
as the haute couture capital of the world, the two shows, Goldstick says, “deal with dark secrets and fear of exposure.”
MORE: 'PLL' Stars Lucy Hale and Sasha Pieterse Tease Season 7 Musical Number
“I tend to gravitate to stories where people are living
some kind of lie, dreading the day when the truth will come out and expose them
for who they are not,” Goldstick, who also produced Ugly Betty and Lipstick Jungle continues, adding that the
fashion world is often ripe for skewering: “Yes, I’m the same guy who had Ugly
Betty’s boss, Wilhelmina, soften her calloused feet with flesh-eating
guppies.”
Oliver Goldstick
“My Name Is Trouble,” Episode 3, Season 2
Choosing a “favorite scene” is a slippery pursuit; the
moment you isolate one, your mind ricochets to another, and then another. But I do recall filming a
delicate, haunting scene, early in the PLL
journey, that continues to resonate for me. When Aria finds herself in the same pottery class as her blind nemesis,
Jenna Marshall, she has two options -- she can either flee or stick around and
use the opportunity to glean insight into this treacherous figure. Choosing
the latter, Aria alters her voice, introduces herself as “Anita,” and gains
Jenna’s confidence. Later, when they’re alone, Jenna asks Aria to place a lit
candle in the lantern she’s
constructed and then… turn off the lights.
Aria, disarmed by this odd request from a sightless girl, eventually complies. Jenna
struggles to see the constellation of starbursts climbing the wall. But she can’t. And when a crumbling
Jenna asks “Anita” to describe it, Aria falters, searching for her voice. Jenna
fills in the painful silence with a vivid childhood memory of looking at the
sky from underwater -- when she still had
vision. Suddenly, this vengeful, malevolent figure -- the prime suspect for “A” -- is reduced to a vulnerable, frightened
little girl. A fresh light is literally
thrown on the “monster” and everything Aria thought she understood about Jenna is
thrown into question. The scene manages to be spooky and moving and ironic.
The scene haunts me because it encapsulates a fear that we
all carry with us: Have I caused
irrevocable damage to another human being? Have I hurt someone so deeply that
there’s nothing I can do to heal the wound? What can I do to erase the past?
I don’t know, maybe because I’m also a visual person, the idea of robbing
someone of their sight really hits me
on a visceral level.
Naturally, when writing the episode, we hope that everything we write will snap, crackle,
and pop -- but it’s truly alchemy, isn’t it? I had the good fortune of working with many gifted collaborators: in
this case, Elodie Keene (director), Dana Gonzales (cinematographer) and Lucy
Hale and Tammin Sursok (actors). When
talented actors commit to material, they can reveal more truths than you ever anticipated.
Much of this scene plays out in Lucy’s wide, tear-brimming eyes. And of course, just when a torn, guilt-ridden
Aria is about to come clean, Jenna beats her to the punch. She knows exactly who she’s talking to. The poignant scene ends with a sucker-punch…
and the audience, too, is left on shaky ground. Should we trust Jenna or not? Our job as writers was to always keep the viewer leaning in and guessing,
and this episode was chock full of other reversals. In those early days, we had
a lot of fun surprising ourselves.
Ultimately, the pottery scene provided a good template for
creating scenes that could include emotional resonance and suspenseful plotting. They weren’t mutually exclusive. It gave
us permission to dimensionalize our “villains” and question allegiances. I’d
like to believe our most successful PLL
episodes deployed a healthy mix of emotion, irony, and DREAD. Ultimately, this
was a show about the fear of exposure
– which isn’t exclusive to teenage girls. We have people sitting in very high
offices who are driven by the same demons. You can fill in those blanks.
Pretty Little Liars returns
with its seventh and final season April 18 on Freeform. The Collection is now
streaming on Amazon Prime.