Freeform/Allyson Riggs(NEW YORK) — Pretty Little Liars ran for seven seasons and during that time, it developed a devoted fanbase thanks to the stars’ engaging use of social media. Now, the show’s spinoff, Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, aims to do the same.
The first episode aired Wednesday night on Freeform and the show was the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide.
The series takes PLL favorites Alison DiLaurentis and Mona Vanderwaal, played by Sasha Pieterse and Janel Parrish respectively, and drops them into a whole new mystery set at the highly competitive Beacon Heights University.
Both actresses were on hand to live-tweet the episode.
“I loved just watching all the tweets and seeing how everybody was loving it and their questions,” Pieterse tells ABC Radio. “And it kind of brought me back to PLL where we had so many conversations with our fans all over the world.”
She adds that seeing fans’ positive reactions to the show “was just rewarding because it means we did our job right.”
The themes in The Perfectionists are also coincidentally relevant to the current Operation Varsity Blues college cheating scandal headlines, showing how far people will go to have a “perfect” academic career.
“Yes, the show is very timely, more than we even expected, to be honest, but it’s very telling,” Pieterse says.
“Everyone strives for perfection,” she adds, “And there’s a lot of positives to that. You should be ambitious, you should be passionate about things, but not in this negative way. It’s become negative because everybody wants to look perfect and the lengths that people will go to get there is insane.”
Catch the next episode of Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on Freeform.
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