Why Stephen DeMarco From Tell Me Lies Looks So Familiar

In the Hulu original series "Tell Me Lies" — adapted by Meaghan Oppenheimer from Carola Lovering's book of the same name — lead Jackson White is saddled with a difficult task: he has to play the worst boyfriend anyone's ever had. As a student at the fictional Baird College (located somewhere in upstate New York) who dreams of becoming a lawyer, White's character Stephen DeMarco is odious right from the very beginning ... and his worst qualities are out in full force as he pursues freshman Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten). Early in the show's first episode, "Tell Me Lies" establishes not one but two timelines; in 2008, Stephen and Lucy attend Baird and carry on a fraught on-again, off-again relationship, and in 2015, a grown-up Lucy and Stephen are stuck attending the wedding of their friends Bree (Catherine Missal) and Evan (Branden Cook), desperately trying to avoid one another.

So where have you seen White before? Well, let's get this out of the way: his mom is Katey Sagal (and she does appear on "Tell Me Lies" from time to time as Stephen's troubled mother Norah), so he is what we call a "nepo baby." Still, White is pretty talented and while "Tell Me Lies" is his first major credit, you've definitely seen him in a handful of other projects before. Here's why Stephen on "Tell Me Lies" looks so familiar.

"Mrs. Fletcher" — the original HBO series based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name — is mostly a showcase for Kathryn Hahn, but it gives a pretty good spotlight to Jackson White as Hahn's on-screen son. As Eve Fletcher, a middle-aged divorcée rediscovering her sexuality, Hahn is a revelation, and as she (somewhat obsessively) delves into the joys of self-love, her son Brendan, played by White, prepares to head to college and embark on his own journey of self-actualization.

Across seven episodes, Brendan and Eve's plotlines mostly run parallel — while Eve takes charge at work, flirts with strangers, and navigates the dating scene, Brendan ends up romancing a girl at school named Chloe ("Hamilton" and "Blindspotting" star Jasmine Cephas Jones) and befriends his roommate Zach (the late Disney actor Cameron Boyce), and deals with the fact that his dad Ted (Josh Hamilton) has a new wife and family. The series might be named after Hahn's character, but Brendan is just as important to the success of the show, with his own personal struggles contrasting against those of his mom. Without spoiling the ending, White also gets a major moment with Hahn at the end of the miniseries, so if you haven't watched "Mrs. Fletcher," go ahead and check it out ... that is, if you can find it.

In Rachel Winter's 2021 directorial debut "The Space Between," Jackson White finds an extremely unlikely scene partner in Kelsey Grammer ... but somehow, it just works. Grammer plays aging musician Micky Adams, who's avoiding his record label as they desperately try to get him to end their contract; unfortunately for the label's junior staffer Charlie Porter (White), it's his job to seek Micky out and convince him to sign the termination agreement. 

This is a much harder task than Charlie anticipates, especially since Micky kicks things off by basically feeding psychedelic drugs to Charlie and sending them both on a wild, completely nude trip — and after some time together, Charlie ultimately gets Micky out of his apparent creative rut. Not only does the older musician start playing again, but Micky tells Charlie that he's his new "muse," leading him to realize that perhaps he's not ready to leave his agreement with the label after all. Everything works out in the end — in that photos of a nude Micky leak to the press, making him relevant again to the point where the label basically begs Micky to perform at the Grammys — but the heart of the movie is the bond between Charlie and Micky and how it finally reignites Micky's creative spark. "The Space Between" is an unexpectedly sweet movie, and even alongside a veteran like Grammer, White shines as a co-lead.

If you somehow missed Michael Bay's absolutely bonkers action thriller "Ambulance," which came out in 2022, you're actually missing out on a good — albeit extremely stupid — time, and you also might be surprised to learn that Jackson White plays a pretty big role in a cast full of (much more established) Hollywood stars. At the beginning of the film, we meet adoptive brothers Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a former Marine, and career criminal Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal), who decide to pull off a bank heist valued at $32 million, but they run into a major problem partway through the heist itself: Officer Zach Parker (White), who headed to the bank to ask out one of the tellers. After Danny and Will take Zach hostage and have a shootout with his partner Officer Mark Ransaw (Cedric Sanders), Zach ends up taking a bullet from Will's gun as he tries to escape. Though Danny and Will simply leave Zach to die, Bay, as is his way, raises the ante, having the brothers hijack an ambulance that's bringing Zach to the hospital.

"Ambulance" is a patently absurd movie involving an ambulance chase, a farting dog on the front lines, and an EMT performing a full surgery in the titular ambulance (with the EMT played by Eiza González), and White is ... pretty good in it! He definitely holds his own alongside Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen, and more to the point, he understands that the movie is absolutely insane ... and leans all the way in.

In the 2023 prequel to Stephen King's classic horror tale "Pet Sematary" — "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines," directed and written by Lindsey Anderson Beer — John Lithgow's character from the 2019 film, Jud Crandall, gets significantly aged down ... and he's played by none other than Jackson White. 50 years before the original story takes place (specifically, in 1969), White's Jud and his girlfriend Norma (Natalie Alyn Lind) are headed away from their hometown of Ludlow, Maine so that they can go join the Peace Corps, but before they leave town, they start noticing that the corpses of reanimated, deceased animals — and people — are terrorizing Ludlow, including the body of a Vietnam war veteran named Timmy Baterman (Jack Mulhern) who was killed in action. Ultimately, they discover that the town is on the land of the Mi'kmaq tribe, and that tribe built a ceremony that apparently houses the undead.

Look. "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines" is not a good movie. That isn't White's fault, though! If you're a "Tell Me Lies" fan who's curious to see White's first leading role — or you're a King superfan who will watch absolutely anything even tangentially related to the prolific horror author — consider checking out "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines." If you don't fall into either of those categories, though, you can go ahead and skip this one.