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On the Set: 'Lie to Me'
"When you try to hide an emotion ... you cannot inhibit the signal from being sent to the facial nerve, you can only compress the amount of time it shows for." -- Samuel Baum, creator of 'Lie to Me' The average person lies three times in every 10 minutes of conversation. But after a quick training in lie detection, we couldn't read any fibs or half-truths happening on the L.A. set of Fox's newest hit drama, 'Lie to Me' (Wed. 9PM ET).
Based on the real-life work of Dr. Paul Ekman, 'Lie to Me' follows Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) and his team of human lie detectors for hire.
AOL TV got the scoop on the new show and sat down with Dr. Ekman, series creator Samuel Baum and the extremely candid cast to find out the secret behind lying, the curse of being able to detect lies and which newly elected high-ranking official (ahem, President Obama!) will be making an appearance on the show soon. --By Maggie Furlong
On the Set: Lie to Me'
The average person lies three times in every 10 minutes of conversation. But after a quick training in lie detection, we couldn't read any fibs or half-truths happening on the L.A. set of Fox's newest hit drama, 'Lie to Me' (Wed. 9PM ET).
Based on the real-life work of Dr. Paul Ekman, 'Lie to Me' follows Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) and his team of human lie detectors for hire.
AOL TV got the scoop on the new show and sat down with Dr. Ekman, series creator Samuel Baum and the extremely candid cast to find out the secret behind lying, the curse of being able to detect lies and which newly elected high-ranking official (ahem, President Obama!) will be making an appearance on the show soon. --By Maggie Furlong
Frank Ockenfels/Fox
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
According to Dr. Ekman, there are seven universal micro expressions -- anger, fear, contempt, happiness, sadness, disgust and surprise -- and each one has distinct facial and body language indicators that even the best liars can't hide. Although these micro expressions generally only last for 1/25 of a second, taking Dr. Ekman's test on fox.com can help you learn how to better spot them.
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Lying to Us?
Creator Samuel Baum is very open about where the idea for this series came from ... at least we think he is: "I've just been a liar since I was very small. [Laughs] No, I'm just really interested in lies, because they're the things we feel like we can't talk about. Whether that's little lies that happen every day or big, huge ones."
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Stiff Competition
Honesty must be the policy on set: star Brendan Hines (who plays Eli Loker) is very frank about where his new show ranks in TV history. "The best television show in the history of television is no longer on the air anymore, sadly -- it's called 'The Wire.' There's never been anything better, there never will be anything better. Not even 'Lie to Me,' I'm sorry to say. Although it's gonna come damn close. But that's like trying to be better than Brooks Robinson at third base, you can't do it. It's like saying you can beat 'Citizen Kane' ... you just can't."
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The Politics of Lying
How much does someone like Dr. Ekman pay attention to the elections? "A lot! I was supporting Edwards to start with, so clearly he fooled me. [Laughs] Palin was really quite interesting -- I was just looking at some video of her debate with Biden and it was unnatural, memorized speech. She spoke too quickly and there were no pauses, no hesitations. She was completely reading memorized lines. You can understand why they would do that -- she was a woman with no oratorical experience, so they didn't want to trust that she could handle things more spontaneously. But even her winks were all rehearsed too. Everything she did."
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It Comes With the Job ...
Has lie detecting on the show affected star Monica Raymund (who plays Ria Torres) in real life? "One day we were on set and there was this guy hitting on this girl, and I could tell from very far away. I was like 'Oh my god, he was totally into you.' And she was like, 'What are you talking about?' [Laughs] So sometimes I surprise myself because I'm able to sort of see it here and there, but no -- I can't always tell if you're lying."
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Art Imitating Life
Is Dr. Ekman thrilled to have Tim Roth portraying him on TV? "Actually I wanted Harrison Ford. [Laughs]" So how much is Lightman like Ekman? "My agreement with them was they could use anything in my professional life and nothing from my personal life. So he's divorced with a bad relationship with his daughter, I'm married 30 years with a good relationship. I'm an American, he's an Englishman. He's skinny, I'm not. [Laughs] Lightman is insulting and presumptuous ... but he's also smart, and that's the only thing we share."
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Stage Fright
Does knowing all the signs of lying make a person more neurotic? "I'm not very good at being around Paul [Ekman] ... when Paul's on set I get sort of, 'Oh, I've left something in the car,'" Oscar nominee Tim Roth admits with a laugh. "He's very sweet, but once you learn this stuff you can't unlearn it, and he is the specialist. So you constantly think that he can read everything that you're thinking, and it makes you quite nervous. It makes you think about how you're behaving, whereas normally you don't think about that at all."
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Win One for the Gipper
Being the world's leading deception expert, Dr. Ekman (pictured) is often called in to study suspects for criminal cases. He says that Scott Peterson reminded him a bit of Bill Clinton by "just being a terrible liar." But who is the worst liar in his book? "Ronald Regan. He rarely lied, and yet he's really hard to figure out because he often didn't really distinguish between truth and fiction. He played the role of the Gipper all the time in the public ... he sort of thought that's who he was."
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Hail to the Chief
"President Obama will be making a guest appearance on 'Lie to Me' in an upcoming episode," Baum spilled, although he refused to comment about how he'll be appearing. But what we do know: "You will get to see a gesture of his that will be unpacked and illustrated on the show. You'll get to see his true feelings about someone." We wonder if John McCain is watching the show ...
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