Executive producer Marlene King and star Vanessa Ray talk to BuzzFeed News about the “A” reveal that shocked some viewers and upset others.
Dylan Garza as Charles in a flashback on Pretty Little Liars.
ABC Family
Vanessa Ray as Charlotte/Cece on Pretty Little Liars.
ABC Family
After seasons of taunting, stalking, and mind games, Pretty Little Liars finally revealed the identity of "A" — the masked assailant who has long tormented Aria (Lucy Hale), Spencer (Troian Bellisario), Hanna (Ashley Benson), Emily (Shay Mitchell), and Alison (Sasha Pieterse) — on Tuesday night.
Throughout the series' current sixth season, it's been known that Charles DiLaurentis — Ali's brother, long presumed dead — was behind all of the Liars' hell, but it turned out, in Tuesday night's Season 6 mid-season finale, that "A" was none other than CeCe — short for Charlotte — Drake (Vanessa Ray), who was given the name Charles at birth.
Yes, CeCe is Ali's transgender sibling.
While some fans found the reveal lacking — as it didn't adequately explain all of the show's complex mysteries — others were more concerned that the twist played into a long history of pop culture linking sociopathic behavior with transgender individuals.
And that worry was always front and center in the mind of executive producer Marlene King, who wrote last night's episode, "Game Over, Charles." "I didn't want people to think that this person was a villain because of their gender identity," she told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. "She was a villain because she came from a very, very crazy family, so genetically she is probably a little crazy too. It was really important to us as a show and to the studio and the network that people took away that message exactly. We didn't want to go backwards for the trans community, we wanted to go forward."
Ray agreed in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News. "Being transgender had nothing to do with her being a villain," she said of CeCe. "I think the lesson we can learn is that if you neglect or torment somebody, which I believe Charles/Charlotte was, at a young age — whether that be by parents or [society] — if you treat somebody like they're nothing, chances are they will treat others like they're nothing as well."