New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
‘ONE OF US IS LYING’
CONNECTICUT ACTOR CHIBUIKEM UCHE TALKS ABOUT SEASON 2 ON PEACOCK
Season two of the Peacock Original series “One Of Us Is Lying” (based on the best-selling Y/A book of the same name) dropped the very night megastar Taylor Swift began streaming her latest record, “Midnights.” Talk about competition.
The set-up of the series/book may sound familiar to many of you: Five very different students all get detention. “The Breakfast Club” anyone? Except in Karen M. McManus’s bestseller, one of them doesn’t make it out alive.
“As long as Cooper Clay stays okay,” laughed actor Chibuikem “Chib” Uche, speaking about his own character on the show. He also deemed the “‘Breakfast Club’ except one of those in detention dies” synopsis “fair.” Uche may also be familiar to some in Connecticut as he hails from West Hartford, attending Hall High School and UConn.
In the show, Clay, along with all of the other rule-breakers, has his own secret he’d like to keep, all while the mystery behind the death of Simon Kelleher (Mark McKenna) unfolds. He’s joined on the phone by co-star Annalisa Cochrane, who also stars in the runaway hit series “Cobra Kai.” She acknowledges the “Swift” competition by way of gushing about how many songs would work on the soundtrack to this show.
She plays the resident “teen queen,” while Uche’s Clay is the rising baseball prospect. Simon, this “Murder Club” has decided, was the group’s “basket case” (that would be Ally Sheedy in the Hughes 80’s classic), and the club needed be formed in order to solve his murder. Season two ended with the requisite cliffhanger (or three).
“We got a chance to meet Karen and chat,” said Uche. “She was a consultant on season one of the show. Season two they deviated from the book. Our producers took creative control and went in a different direction. We had no idea what we were walking into in season two. And they take their time telling us what’s going to happen, believe me.”
When asked to expound upon the deviation from the original source material, Uche had this to say:
“I know the writers always had a little bit of a vision of where they wanted to take this. The books do continue, but they follow a different set of characters. The writers and us, we all just loved working together, so they wanted to keep following these stories. These specific four high school students. They sped it up towards the end of season one and we run in guns blazing in season two. No pause.”
Prior to his success here with “One Of Us Is Lying,” Uche had a recurring role in ABC’s “American Housewife” set in Westport. Some Westport residents didn’t initially take too kindly to the depiction of their town on the sitcom. His character, Andre, didn’t come along until season five, along with Holly Robinson Peete, but joined “recurring character status” that included Leslie Bibb and Wendie Malick.
“Listen,” chuckled Uche, “I’m more of an 860 than 203 guy in the first place. My senior year of high school I was kicked out of states by Staples in soccer. So, I’m okay with the Westporters being a little upset. I’m kidding! I actually thought that we did a good job portraying Connecticut.”
The overlap of the cancellation of “American Housewife” and “One Of Us Is Lying” going into production was seamless for Uche, making 2021 a busy year for the up-and-comer — which makes season three getting a green light to keep that momentum going all the more important.
The season two finale did included a cryptic flash forward to the gang’s high school graduation and, let’s just say, it looks like the lying — and the dying — continue.
Both seasons can be streamed on Peacock now.