'The show gets bigger and bigger.'
Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists' biggest mysteries are yet to come.
ET caught up with Hayley Erin, who teased what's coming up on the Pretty Little Liars spinoff now that her character, Taylor Hotchkiss, has been found very much alive by Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse).
"I think Taylor’s a smart cookie and she wouldn’t have done what she did if she didn’t find it 100 percent, completely necessary," Erin said of Taylor's decision to fake her own death with the help of her brother, Nolan Hotchkiss, before he was found murdered. "We’ll learn a lot more, but… it was worth it to Taylor to fake her own death in the end."
"She knows a little something and she put together some dots," Erin, 24, added before revealing that both Taylor's mom (Kelly Rutherford) and the college security system that she put in place, Beacon Guard, played a role in Taylor's decision.
"It’s all connected somehow," she said. "Taylor had to get out of there."
Following Alison uncovering Taylor's hideout, Erin said that there's potential that the duo will team up to unravel all of Beacon Heights' mysteries together.
"I think Taylor is definitely on the edge right now and it would take a lot for her to trust someone right off the bat, so Alison might have to work for Taylor’s trust a little bit, but it’s a potentiality," she said. "Taylor’s got her priorities straight... but now, with the development of Nolan’s murder, she’s a little distracted. She’s going to have to keep her head on straight trying to solve whatever the original mystery was while also being concerned with who killed Nolan."
Alison's discovery of Taylor after Nolan's death was actually "perfect timing" because she was all alone in the world without the help of her brother.
"Nolan was her link to the rest of the world," Erin explained. "So now, she’s sort of being forced out. It’s kind of a good thing, in the long run... because I always think [about how] Nolan brought her that bag of food in the pilot, so she’s been hunting squirrels! Since Nolan died, she’s definitely been eating, like, raccoons for dinner."
Now that Taylor's time in hiding is running out, Erin can't wait for fans to get to know her character and see how she impacts life in Beacon Heights.
"I’m so excited for everyone to meet Taylor and get to know her a little better," she said. "I think she’s really interesting and she kind of shakes things up for the kids in Beacon Heights. I’m excited for everyone to see what we’ve been up to."
With the small town mysteries piling up, Erin expressed relief that she's not privy to upcoming plotlines and character developments as secret keeping is definitely not her forte.
"If you know where it’s gonna go, then you kind of lean into that, and I think that’s something that’s been so successful for the show, keeping the mystery alive," she said. "... [Actors] like to think of ourselves as being good at keeping secrets, but there’s some subconscious thing that you can’t… keep a secret from yourself. I’m so excited to read [the scripts] because I can’t wait to learn about what’s gonna happen or where the characters are gonna go."
"No one tells me anything and I love it," she added with a laugh.
Though she may not know many specific plot points of future episodes, Erin promised that the "addictive" series will answer questions and find even more things to be curious about when it wraps its freshman season.
"I think it’s really cool that the scope of the show gets bigger and bigger. So as the characters start interacting more and we start answering questions, we start asking more questions and the questions get bigger and bigger," she said. "At the end of the season, it’s exciting to know that you’re asking the right questions."
Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists airs Wednesdays on Freeform.
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