Pretty Little Liars star Lucy Hale returns to television in The CW’s new television series Life Sentence, which sees her character find out she is no longer dying from cancer after eight years.
Life Sentence follows Stella (Lucy Hale), a girl who has spent the last eight years living like she was dying (because she was). Just like the “manic pixie dream girl” heroines in her favourite sappy cancer movies, Stella travelled the world, faced her darkest fears and found true love on a whirlwind trip to Paris. But when Stella finds out that her cancer has been cured, she is suddenly forced to face the long-term consequences of the “live in the moment” decisions she made, including marrying a total stranger. And if that’s not enough, she also finds out that her “perfect family” isn’t so perfect after all.
Turns out, because she was dying, everyone in her life hid their problems from her. But, now that she’s well, all bets are off. Stella is shocked to learn that her parents, Peter (Dylan Walsh) and Ida (Gillian Vigman), have fallen out of love, partly because Peter spent their retirement helping Stella make the most of her final days, and partly because Ida has fallen in love with her best friend (Stella’s godmother), Poppy.
Also, it turns out Stella may be responsible for the fact that her sister, Elizabeth (Brooke Lyons), gave up her own dreams to take care of Stella and start a family with her husband Diego (Carlos PenaVega), just to give her parents something positive to focus on. Then there’s Stella’s often overlooked brother, Aiden (Jayson Blair), who’s pushing 30 and still lives above the garage, sells Adderall to soccer moms and uses Stella’s cancer to guilt them into sleeping with him.
And, of course, there’s her husband Wes (Elliot Knight), a handsome Londoner who she agreed to spend the rest of her life with, thinking that would only be six to eight months, tops. Now that their forever just got a whole lot longer than they were expecting, Wes begins to worry that he can’t continue to pretend to be her perfect husband for the rest of his life.
With a real future suddenly in front of her, Stella’s cinematic life snaps into reality, and instead of living like she’s dying, she will have to learn to live like she’s living, and help her family and friends do the same. This multi-generational, coming-of-age story proves that we all end up living somewhere between our dreams and reality… and maybe that’s okay.
From Doozer Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Television Studios, with executive producers Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith (Significant Mother), Bill Lawrence (Cougar Town), Jeff Ingold (Ground Floor), Oliver Goldstick (Pretty Little Liars) and Lee Toland Krieger (Riverdale).
The series stars Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars), Elliot Knight (Once Upon A Time), Dylan Walsh (Nip/Tuck), Gillian Vigman (The Hangover), Jayson Blair (Whiplash), Brooke Lyons (The Affair) and Carlos PenaVega (Big Time Rush).
The new series premieres Wednesday March 7 at 9/8c on The CW.
