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Meaghan Oppenheimer: The Screenwriter Behind Tell Me Lies
Early Life and Education
Meaghan Oppenheimer was born on 28 March 1986 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city that would shape her perspective and eventually inspire some of her most personal work. She grew up in a family deeply committed to education and social causes. Her father, Reed Oppenheimer, was involved with several charitable organisations, whilst her mother, Gabrielle Oppenheimer, held multiple degrees in history and art history. Meaghan was one of four siblings — she has two brothers, Eric and Luke, and a sister named Sophie.
Her upbringing in Tulsa was formative. Oklahoma is not typically associated with the entertainment industry, and that distance from Hollywood may have given Oppenheimer a unique perspective. She was not immersed in the machinery of fame from an early age. Instead, she was surrounded by books, art, and a family culture that valued intellectual curiosity.
Oppenheimer attended Holland Hall, a private school in Tulsa, where she first discovered her love for performance and storytelling. After completing her secondary education, she made the bold decision to move to New York City to study at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, one of the most prestigious creative institutions in the world. She graduated from Tisch in 2009, armed with a formal education in the arts and a burning desire to make her mark.
It was during her time at Tisch that Oppenheimer began to understand the difference between wanting to perform and wanting to create. She would spend the next few years navigating that tension before finally committing to writing as her primary craft.
From Acting to Writing: A Career Pivot
Like many creative people, Meaghan Oppenheimer did not begin her career with a clear plan. She started out as a child actor, appearing in regional theatre productions and local television programmes in Tulsa from approximately 1999 to 2005. These early experiences gave her an invaluable understanding of what it feels like to stand in front of an audience, to memorise lines, and to bring a character to life.
Her first on-screen credit came in 2000, when she appeared in a minor role in the Disney Channel pilot for Even Stevens. It was a small part, but it marked her entry into professional acting. Over the next decade, she accumulated a handful of credits in independent films, web series, and television pilots, including roles in The Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams of Duncan Christopher (2010), the web series stalkTALK (2011), and the television film How to Marry a Billionaire (2011).
But something was shifting. Oppenheimer found herself increasingly drawn to the scripts she was reading rather than the characters she was playing. She noticed that the words on the page were where the real creative power lay. As she would later explain in interviews, acting taught her how to write because it forced her to understand what dialogue actually sounds like when spoken aloud. She learned which sentences felt natural in an actor’s mouth and which ones fell flat.
This realisation led her to make a difficult but decisive pivot. By 2012, she had stopped acting altogether and turned her full attention to screenwriting. It was a risky move — Hollywood is full of aspiring writers who never break through — but Oppenheimer had something that many of them lacked: firsthand experience of what actors need from a script.
Breaking Into Screenwriting
Meaghan Oppenheimer’s transition to screenwriting began in earnest in 2010 with Hot Mess, a short film that she both wrote and starred in. The film told the story of two roommates who become involved in a secretive friends-with-benefits arrangement, a premise that hinted at the themes that would dominate her later work: complicated relationships, hidden desires, and the emotional consequences of our choices.
Hot Mess was a modest project, but it served as a calling card. It demonstrated that Oppenheimer could craft a coherent narrative, write dialogue that felt authentic, and handle the emotional complexity of adult relationships. More importantly, it proved that she could finish a project — a surprisingly rare skill in an industry where many aspiring writers never make it past the first draft.
After Hot Mess, Oppenheimer relocated to Los Angeles, the centre of the American entertainment industry. Los Angeles in the early 2010s was a competitive environment for young writers, but Oppenheimer had the advantage of her acting background and her Tisch education. She began networking, taking meetings, and writing spec scripts in the hope that one of them would catch someone’s attention.
Her persistence paid off. By 2013, she had written an original screenplay titled The Remains, which would become the project that truly launched her career.
The Black List Recognition
In 2013, Meaghan Oppenheimer‘s screenplay The Remains was selected for the annual Black List, an influential survey of Hollywood’s most promising unproduced screenplays. The Black List is compiled from votes by over 250 film executives, agents, and producers, and inclusion on it is considered one of the most prestigious accolades a screenwriter can receive before their script is actually made into a film.
The Remains told the story of three former childhood friends who reunite to scatter the ashes of a mutual acquaintance, forcing them to confront their tangled past and the emotional reckonings they had been avoiding. The premise was intimate and character-driven, exactly the kind of story that Oppenheimer would become known for. The Black List recognition put her on the radar of major studios and producers, and it opened doors that might otherwise have remained closed for years.
This was a pivotal moment. For a writer without a long track record of produced work, the Black List served as a powerful endorsement. It told the industry: this person can write. This person understands structure, character, and emotion. This person is worth investing in.
The success of The Remains on the Black List led directly to Oppenheimer’s first major professional opportunities in television and film. Within two years, she would have credits on both a major studio film and a high-profile television series.
Major Projects: From We Are Your Friends to Fear the Walking Dead
Meaghan Oppenheimer’s first significant screenwriting credit came in 2015, and it arrived in two very different forms: a feature film about electronic dance music and an episode of a zombie apocalypse television series.
We Are Your Friends (2015)
In 2015, Oppenheimer co-wrote the screenplay for We Are Your Friends, a musical drama directed by Max Joseph and starring Zac Efron. The film followed an aspiring DJ named Cole Carter as he navigated ambition, friendship, romance, and ethical dilemmas in the high-stakes world of Los Angeles club culture and electronic dance music production.
Oppenheimer was hired by Working Title Films to adapt a pre-existing concept about the EDM scene, which was a departure from her usual approach of writing original material. She conducted extensive research into the electronic music world, immersing herself in the culture of clubs, festivals, and music production to ensure authenticity.
The film received mixed reviews from critics — it holds a 40% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes — and was a commercial disappointment, grossing only $10.2 million worldwide against a $2 million budget.
However, the experience was invaluable for Oppenheimer. It taught her how to work within the studio system, how to collaborate with a director, and how to adapt someone else’s vision whilst still bringing her own creative voice to the material.
Fear the Walking Dead (2015)
That same year, Oppenheimer wrote the fourth episode of the first season of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, titled “Not Fade Away.” The episode, which aired on 20 September 2015, explored the tensions within a family trying to survive the early days of a zombie outbreak.
Writing for an established franchise like The Walking Dead universe was a different challenge entirely. Oppenheimer had to adapt her voice to fit the tone of an existing show whilst still bringing something fresh to the episode. “Not Fade Away” was directed by Kari Skogland and showcased Oppenheimer’s ability to write intense, emotionally charged narratives within the constraints of a pre-existing format.
These two projects, released in the same year, demonstrated Oppenheimer’s range. She could write a youth-oriented studio film and a dark, apocalyptic television episode with equal competence. That versatility would serve her well as she moved into more senior creative roles.
Queen America: First Showrunning Experience
In 2018, Meaghan Oppenheimer took a significant step forward in her career by creating Queen America, a dark comedy-drama series for Facebook Watch. The show starred Catherine Zeta-Jones as Vicki Ellis, a ruthless pageant coach in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who takes on a new client and attempts to mould her into a beauty queen.
Queen America was deeply personal for Oppenheimer. By setting the show in her hometown of Tulsa, she was able to draw on her own experiences and observations of Oklahoma culture. The world of beauty pageants provided a rich backdrop for exploring themes of ambition, self-worth, and the often-toxic standards imposed on women. Judith Light also starred in the series, adding further prestige to the project.
The show ran for one season of ten episodes, and Oppenheimer served as both creator and showrunner. This was her first experience running a writers’ room, managing a production, and overseeing every aspect of a series from script to screen. It was a steep learning curve, but it prepared her for the much larger responsibility she would take on just a few years later.
Queen America may not have achieved the mainstream success of Oppenheimer’s later work, but it was a crucial stepping stone. It proved that she could create an original series, attract top-tier talent, and manage the complex logistics of television production. Most importantly, it demonstrated that her thematic interests — flawed women, complicated relationships, and the dark undercurrents of seemingly glamorous worlds — could sustain a full series.
Tell Me Lies: The Breakthrough Series
If Queen America was Meaghan Oppenheimer’s apprenticeship, Tell Me Lies was her masterpiece. Adapted from Carola Lovering’s 2018 novel of the same name, the Hulu drama series premiered in 2022 and quickly became one of the streamer’s most talked-about shows.
The Premise
Tell Me Lies follows the toxic, obsessive relationship between Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White), two college students whose romance unfolds over the course of eight years. The story begins in the late 2000s and explores how their relationship damages not only each other but everyone in their orbit.
The series is unflinching in its portrayal of manipulation, gaslighting, and the ways in which young love can spiral into something destructive. It is not a comfortable watch, but it is an honest one. And that honesty is what has made it so compelling to audiences.
Oppenheimer as Showrunner
As the creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Tell Me Lies, Oppenheimer was responsible for every major creative decision. She adapted Lovering’s novel for television, wrote multiple episodes across the series, and guided the overall narrative arc. She also oversaw the writers’ room, worked closely with the directors, and collaborated with the cast to ensure that the performances matched her vision.
In interviews, Oppenheimer has described Tell Me Lies as a story about “obsessive love and the ramifications of the things that we do to ourselves and to other people when we allow ourselves to get completely lost inside of another person.” She has also emphasised that whilst the plot is not autobiographical, the emotions are. “Pretty much all the emotions that are in Tell Me Lies are things that I have felt before to different degrees,” she explained.
Critical and Commercial Success
Tell Me Lies received positive reviews from critics, who praised its unflinching portrayal of toxic relationships and the strong performances of its lead actors. The series was renewed for a second season, which premiered in September 2024, and then for a third season in December 2024.
According to Disney, all three seasons of the show have been streamed for over 350 million hours across Hulu and Disney+ since its launch in 2022.
That is a remarkable achievement for a relatively intimate drama without the built-in audience of a major franchise.
The success of Tell Me Lies has firmly established Oppenheimer as one of the most exciting showrunners in television. It has also demonstrated that audiences are hungry for stories that take emotional risks and refuse to offer easy answers.
Tom Ellis’s Involvement
In an interesting crossover of personal and professional life, Oppenheimer’s husband, Welsh actor Tom Ellis (best known for Lucifer), joined the cast of Tell Me Lies for its second season. His involvement added another layer of public interest to the series and highlighted the creative partnership between the couple.
What Makes Meaghan Oppenheimer’s Writing Distinctive?
With so many talented writers working in television today, what sets Meaghan Oppenheimer apart? Several characteristics define her creative voice:
1. Emotional Authenticity
Oppenheimer’s writing is rooted in genuine emotional experience. She does not shy away from the ugly, uncomfortable aspects of human behaviour. Her characters lie, manipulate, and hurt one another — but they do so for reasons that feel psychologically real. As she has said, she draws on her own emotions and the emotions of people she knows, even when the specific situations are fictional.
2. Dialogue That Sounds Real
Her acting background gives her a distinct advantage when it comes to writing dialogue. Oppenheimer whispers her lines aloud as she writes, testing whether they feel natural in the mouth. She has noted that many writers make the mistake of writing sentences that look fine on the page but become awkward when spoken. Her commitment to auditory authenticity makes her dialogue crackle with realism.
3. Flawed, Complex Characters
Oppenheimer is not interested in heroes and villains. Her characters exist in the grey area between right and wrong. Lucy Albright in Tell Me Lies is not a passive victim; she makes choices that contribute to her own entrapment. Stephen DeMarco is not a cartoonish villain; he is a damaged person who damages others in turn. This moral complexity makes her characters feel like real people rather than plot devices.
4. Thematic Consistency
Across her body of work, Oppenheimer returns to certain themes again and again: the dark side of ambition, the toxicity of obsessive love, the way our pasts haunt our presents, and the difficulty of maintaining identity within a relationship. Whether she is writing about beauty pageants, electronic music, or college romance, these thematic through-lines give her work a coherence and depth that rewards repeat viewing.
5. Female-Centric Storytelling
Whilst Oppenheimer writes male characters with equal care, her work often centres on the experiences of women navigating difficult emotional terrain. Queen America examined the pressures placed on women to conform to beauty standards. Tell Me Lies explores how young women can lose themselves in relationships. Her female characters are neither saints nor sinners; they are simply human.
Personal Life and Family
Meaghan Oppenheimer married Welsh actor Tom Ellis on 1 June 2019, after a four-year relationship. Ellis is best known for his starring role in the Netflix series Lucifer, in which he played the titular character. The couple’s relationship has attracted significant media attention, partly due to Ellis’s fame and partly because of the rarity of high-profile Hollywood couples where both partners work behind and in front of the camera.
Oppenheimer is stepmother to Ellis’s three daughters from his previous marriage. In November 2023, the couple welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Dolly Ellis-Oppenheimer, born via surrogacy.
Despite their public profiles, Oppenheimer and Ellis have managed to keep much of their personal life private. They reside near a family-owned polo ranch on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a choice that reflects Oppenheimer’s deep connection to her home state.
Their creative partnership has also become a professional one. In addition to Ellis’s role in Tell Me Lies, the couple is collaborating on a new Hulu series titled Second Wife, which Oppenheimer created and is co-writing with Ellis starring alongside Emma Roberts.
What’s Next for Meaghan Oppenheimer?
Meaghan Oppenheimer’s career shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, she appears to be entering her most productive and ambitious phase yet.
Second Wife
Oppenheimer is currently developing Second Wife, a limited series for Hulu that she created and is co-writing. The series will star her husband, Tom Ellis, alongside Emma Roberts, with both actors also serving as executive producers. Details about the plot remain under wraps, but the project represents another collaboration between Oppenheimer and Hulu, suggesting that the streamer has full confidence in her creative vision.
Bastards
In April 2026, Variety reported that Oppenheimer is developing a new drama series titled Bastards at Hulu, on which she will serve as writer and executive producer. The series, which has received an enthusiastic response from the streamer, follows three adult children — each from a different father — who are forced to move back into their childhood home to care for a teenage sister they barely know after their world-famous artist mother is engulfed in a public scandal.
The logline promises a story about “old dynamics resurfacing and secrets coming to light,” with the siblings confronting “their inheritance of love, cruelty, and chaos.” It is exactly the kind of emotionally complex, character-driven premise that Oppenheimer has proven she can handle.
Overall Deal with 20th Television
In December 2024, Oppenheimer signed a multi-year overall deal with 20th Television, the studio behind Tell Me Lies. This deal ensures that she will continue to develop, write, and executive produce new series for the studio whilst maintaining her role as showrunner of Tell Me Lies.
An overall deal is one of the most coveted arrangements a television writer can secure. It provides financial stability, creative freedom, and the resources to develop multiple projects simultaneously. For Oppenheimer, it is a validation of everything she has built over the past decade.
Conclusion
Meaghan Oppenheimer’s journey from a child actor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to one of the most exciting showrunners in television is a testament to persistence, creative courage, and the power of authentic storytelling. She did not arrive in Hollywood with a famous surname or a powerful connection. She arrived with a talent for understanding human behaviour and a willingness to do the hard work of translating that understanding into scripts.
