Tell Me A Story is known for its gritty take on beloved fairytales. With Season 2, the show is also bringing a powerful family drama into the fold. Odette Annable joined the cast of the CBS All Access psychological thriller series this year, with her storyline tied to Sleeping Beauty alongside Season 1 vets Paul Wesley and Danielle Campbell. Her character, Maddie Pruitt, is also the middle child in the family that ties all the fairytale storylines together.
Annable spoke with PopCulture.com about the family at the center of the season during a visit to the set in Nashville, Tennessee Nov. 19, revealing Maddie is the thread that holds all the dynamics together.
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“This season the show centers around the Pruitt family. I play the quintessential middle child, her name is Madison Pruitt. She’s really the one that is the most stable and the most grounded and kind of holds the family together,” Annable said. “That’s been her role her whole life.
Aside from being there for her family after a traumatic event in Episode 1, Maddie is engaged to Tucker Reed (Wesley), an aspiring writer with a dark secret that starts to reveal itself in the premiere.
“What she doesn’t realize is that she has run into the arms of someone that isn’t as stable as her and isn’t as grounded,” Annable teased. “The man who she thinks that he is isn’t the person that she really thought. So, you start to see that unravel throughout the season and then at the end, you know, sh—t hits the fan.”
While the first season of the anthology series had its fair share of trauma, Annable said the new family drama angle brings another layer of “humanity” to the story. Through the stories of the Pruitt siblings — Maddie, Jackson (Matt Lauria) and Ashley Rose (Natalie Alyn Lind) — the show is bringing a cohesive story tackling Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. Matriarch Rebecca Pruitt (Carrie Anne-Moss) leads the family through the difficult moments ahead.
“I think they did such a beautiful job this year of really interweaving all of the storylines,” Annable said. “Everything is really wrapped up very nicely. I just think that seeing that raw side of humans and what it means to keep something together and people’s perspectives is always so interesting cause it’s so different and unique for each individual.”
Annable thinks of Maddie as the “anchor” of the Pruitt family, juggling her family’s struggles with her own complicated relationship. She said that what her character wants is attention and love from those around her.
“You can really see her strength when she’s with her siblings, and she has a really special relationship with her mother. I think that she mothers her mother. And I think that she’s that way in everybody’s lives,” Annable noted. “And then there comes a point in the season where she starts to unravel and her entire life as she knew it is flipped upside down.”
As for what’s ahead in Season 2, Annable said Maddie will learn some difficult lessons about betrayal.
“I don’t think that this is the journey that she wanted to go on, but I do feel like she might’ve dodged a bullet. I feel like that could be interpreted in many ways,” she teased. “When you’re fooled by a partner, this is the epitome of betrayal that, everything is sort of unraveling and at the end of the season it will all be wrapped up, which I think is really nice for the audience to actually have that resolve.”
“And it’s just been so wonderful to work with Danielle and Paul,” she added. “I just think they’re great and our storyline is really juicy and twisted, and that’s so fun to watch.”
New episodes of Tell Me A Story are made available to stream Thursdays on CBS All Access. The entire first season is also available on the platform.
