‘Pretty Little Liars’ cast discuss show’s ‘wildly inappropriate’ relationships

It’s been 15 years since Pretty Little Liars premiered on ABC Family and gave fans one of TV’s most controversial couples: Aria Montgomery and Ezra Fitz. 

The couple, played by Lucy Hale and Ian Harding, was one of the show’s most talked about couples for its depiction of a teacher-student relationship with a noticeable age-gap, but it was far from the only problematic coupling.

Looking back on PLL’s iconic seven-season run with the Hollywood Reporter, the stars and creator Marlene King admit that the couple is one they “probably” wouldn’t include if they remade the show today.

“What we know now about grooming, that was not something we talked about 15 years ago,” King told the outlet. “I’ve always thought that if we revisit the world, we would have to deal with that. That would be a storyline we’d have to pay attention to and give focus to. But I think they can have their happily ever after because they were everybody’s favorite couple.”

Aria and Ezra – couple name: Ezria – met at a bar right before Aria began her junior year of high school and became the show’s longest-running couple despite the fact that it was fairly controversial to have a college graduate/high school English teacher kiss his 16-year-old student.

King noted, “We were definitely probably crossing a line I wouldn’t cross now, but I don’t want to take away from what they had, either. It was very satisfying for a lot of fans.”

Harding has been known to give his character a hard time, once jokingly referring to Ezra as “America’s most beloved pedophile” in his memoir Odd Birds, published in 2017. While he acknowledges that it isn’t a pairing that would easily be digested in this decade, he hopes that the couple’s “meaningful connection” is “enough to justify the deeply problematic relationship that was certainly not great at the time.”

“As society has progressed, we realized how wildly inappropriate it was,” Harding added.

“But at the same time, just because you depict something on TV doesn’t mean you condone the behavior,” he pointed out. “It is a story meant for entertainment, and the show was a thriller. Now that I look back on it, I see that it was just like the show, with the twists and turns, and it had some horror elements and then it also had this romance component. So I don’t deeply regret it, because it’s fiction. But I also realize that it did bring up a lot of harder discussions about what is actually considered abuse and what is considered love.”

Harding reasoned that, despite their trials and tribulations, Aria and Ezra “found happiness, and there was little collateral damage or pain inflicted by the relationship. There was plenty of pain and horror everywhere on the show, but oddly enough, their relationship seemed to be a safe haven in the storm.”

“There’s no part of me that is feeling such great shame for having played this part. I don’t have any apologies for playing this character,” Harding emphasized. “I do think he was definitely icky in some knowledge, but on the whole, he’s fictional.”

On the other hand, Hale has always been a strong proponent for the couple, even if she can acknowledge how it’s a relic of “a different time.”

“At the time I was cast as Aria, I was 19 years old and I wasn’t really thinking about the bigger themes of it all,” the actress told THR. “I was just stoked to be cast in a TV show. Of course, it hits differently at my age now and I think about the bigger message in anything I play.” 

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But despite the ire it may cause with some viewers over a decade later, Hale said she doesn’t have regrets about bringing them onscreen. “I stand behind their love story forever. That forbidden love story drew a lot of people in.”

Of course, Ezria was far from the only couple in Pretty Little Liars that had a troubling age gap.Troian Bellisario’s Spencer Hastings got caught up with two older men during her time on the show, and star Sasha Pieterse was only 12 years old when they shot the pilot and in her early teens while shooting opposite actors considerably older than her. 

In Pieterse’s experience, working on PLL with the awkward age gaps was something that “never felt weird in the moment.”  

As a mother herself now, the actress said she’s “very aware” of the dynamics in a different way. “When I go back [and watch] I think, ‘How did I feel filming that?’ I always felt protected,” she recalled. “But it’s a weird thing that we do because even though everybody else was over 18, those storylines are still depicting minors. I feel comfortable with it, but it’s an odd thing to wrap your head around.”