LiArs Unite at the Paley Center for Media: PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

In honor of Tuesday night’s much-anticipated season premiere of the popular ABC Family series Pretty Little Liars, many of the cast and the main executive producers and writers for the show appeared at the Paley Center for Media for a special panel on Monday night.

Among the panelists were cast members Keegan Allen, Troian Bellisario, Tyler Blackburn, Ian Harding, Shay Mitchell, Janel Parrish and  Sasha Pieterse as well as executive producers/writers Joseph Daugherty, Oliver Goldstick and I. Marlene King.

Moderated by TV Guide Senior Writer Damian Holbrook the panel actually got started with a sneak peek at part of the opening scene of the season premiere as well as two exclusive clips from that episode. But, soon enough the panel got underway with a promise from Marlene that this is the “season of answers” (which was made clear by events in the season premiere). Marlene also went on to share that we will learn what really happened to Allison (Pieterse) and whether she is really alive or dead (dun, dun, dun).

When asked if the cast ever knows any spoilers in advance, Oliver said that “we never want to tell them”, but Keegan shared that Marlene did tell him in advance about Toby being part of the “A” team; and before he could secretly share that news with Troian, she had already figured it out on her own.

The cast was then asked about the casting process with the focus ending up on Sasha, who – at the time of filming the pilot – was only 12 years old – while all of her co-stars were at least 7 to 10 years older than her. The main cast had no idea at the time of the filming just how young Sasha actually was, but were impressed with how well she carried off playing the role of mean girl Allison despite her youth.

When Janel learned before the end of the first season about who Mona really was, she was very excited, sharing that she yelled “Yay, I get to wear the hoodie!”

While the writers were pretty tight-lipped about what to expect this season – after all many answers will be revealed but they don’t want them revealed TOO soon – they were willing to say this much: Ezra will get to be close with all four of the “Liars” this season for different reasons especially now that (SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t watched the season premiere yet) he is back teaching at Rosewood High School. But fans should expect his relationship with Aria to “not be in great shape”. There will also be a very “Casablanca”-like moment between Hanna and Caleb when he leaves for Ravenswood (the new spin-off series to Pretty Little Liars that will debut this Halloween).

Speaking of Halloween, the cast and writers were very excited to share that they had just wrapped the filming of the annual Halloween episode, which was actually filmed out of sequence, as they are currently filming episode nine of the current season.

Some future episode ideas include possibly doing an episode entirely from the perspective of “A” as well as an all flashback episode; but there were no guarantees on whether either of those two would actually happen (but it sure would fun and interesting, wouldn’t it?).

It should also be noted that Troian prefers her character Spencer with Toby rather than on-again, off-again former boy toy Wren (recurring guest star Julian Morris); the first scene that Tyler filmed was the shower scene with Hanna where he commented the water kept going from hot to cold and back again and that that scene was filmed at about 2 AM on a Friday; and Keegan and Spencer joked about how they are always laughing in each other mouth’s when filming kissing scenes. In fact, Keegan said that fans should make sure to get the DVD for last season, checking out the gag reel as there are some very funny moments between him and Troian during some of their love scenes.

Soon enough the panel had to come to an end with the audience getting a chance to pose some questions to the panelists, including the following:

• Could Marlene describe the pitch process for the show? She revealed that ABC Family actually came to her with the idea and she could not put the first book – written by Sara Shepard – down and needed to know more;

• If the writers could speak about the spin-off briefly? With all three commenting that Ravenswood came out of the short scene during last year’s Halloween episode with the lost little girl who Hanna’s mom encountered. That part of the episode was actually based on an Irish story for which fans seem to become fixated on, and the genesis of Ravenswood will be explored from that;

• And, how much crossover there will be between Pretty Little Liars and Ravenswood? Obviously Tyler will be a regular on the show so Caleb will be seen prominently throughout the show, but it will actually be Toby and Spencer who “take the audience” to Ravenswood.

The next new episode of Pretty Little Liars will air on ABC Family this coming Monday, June 17 at 8/7c.

NOTE: All photos are owned by the Paley Center for Media/Kevin Parry.