Tell Me Lies Stars Turned Real-Life Couple Grace Van Patten and Jackson White on Their Steamy Calvin Klein Campaign
Grace Van Patten and Jackson White were engaged in a heated fight, in character while shooting season three of their Hulu drama, Tell Me Lies, when an unexpected email changed the atmosphere. “It was kind of a hard day—intense scenes and we were just low-energy,” she recalls. The message revealed that the costars and real-life couple had been cast in a new project: Calvin Klein’s Valentine’s Day campaign. “We literally jumped up and down,” Van Patten exclusively tells Vanity Fair.
“We never do that,” White adds, curled up next to Van Patten on a leather couch in the Condé Nast offices in downtown Manhattan. “We couldn’t fight in the scene—we were too happy.” It was a needed mood boost for the leads, who, over three seasons of playing Tell Me Lies’ toxic estranged exes, Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco, have heard their fair share of romantic horror stories from the show’s fan base. Dating in 2026 “seems really scary, honestly,” Van Patten says, “but it’s always the best compliment when people come up to me and say that watching this show encouraged them to get out of a toxic relationship. If this show can do that, then it’s worth making forever.”
Grinning, White can’t help but point out that Tell Me Lies “also makes people call their ex at midnight.” Embodying a character as evil as Stephen has made the far more relaxed White—whose real-life mother, Katey Sagal, plays his character’s troubled mother on the series—relish the character’s small misfortunes. When asked about his favorite Stephen moment of season three, White points to a scene in which he kicks a printer with a paper jam. “You’re proud of that one,” Van Patten quips.
“It was fun to kick the shit out of a printer!” White exclaims. “The mundane is really exciting on the show because it’s usually very loaded up. So doing a little silly thing is always great.”
Grace Van Patten as Lucy Albright and Jackson White Stephen DeMarco in Tell Me Lies season three.Ian Watson
Not long after White and Van Patten met while auditioning for Tell Me Lies, the two bonded over “a shared dream” to work with Calvin Klein, a fashion house that has cast actors including Jeremy Allen White, Chloë Sevigny, Greta Lee, and Alexander Skarsgård in its recent campaigns. “When we first met, we were driving, we passed one of the Calvin billboards, and we were like, ‘We want to do one of those,’” White says. “We literally said that in the car.”
Around this time, they also discovered that they had a habit of showing up at events in very similar ensembles. “Ever since we met, we would meet up and we’d be wearing the same outfit,” Van Patten says. “Even for this press tour, I haven’t seen any of his outfits, he hasn’t seen mine, and we’ll show up and be like…” She gestures toward their his-and-hers jackets. “Oh, wearing leather.”
