Lili Reinhart grew up feeling 'extremely emotional and weird'. Her new TV show helped her to heal.

Lili Reinhart knows what it feels like to be the sensitive kid. The anxious one. The one who doesn't quite fit the mould.

"I grew up feeling extremely emotional and feeling a lot of anxiety and not understanding what it was," she recently told Mamamia.

"Not understanding why I didn't wanna go to a birthday party because I just wanted to hang out with my mum, or why I couldn't sleep over at a friend's house because I wanted to be in my own home. That made me feel weird and strange — to my friends, and to myself."

Watch: Hal & Harper trailer. Post continues below.

That younger version of Lili, confused and self-critical, still lives somewhere inside her. And she's part of what makes Reinhart's performance in the new Stan series Hal & Harper — the new sibling dramedy she stars in and executive produced — feel so raw, real and profoundly personal.

"I see myself, my current 28-year-old self, a lot in my nine-year-old self," she said. "Trying to become someone else would ultimately just be a failure."

That internal tug-of-war — between who we are, who we thought we had to be, and who we're still becoming — sits at the very core of Hal & Harper. Created by actor-director Cooper Raiff (Cha Cha Real Smooth), the show explores the sometimes brutal, often beautiful bond between co-dependent siblings Hal and Harper as they attempt to reconnect and reckon with their shared past.

Image: Stan.

It's a show that invites you in with sharp writing and quiet humour — and then punches you right in the feelings.

Still, Hal & Harper isn't all trauma and family dysfunction. It's also unexpectedly funny — which, according to Raiff, was never part of a deliberate tonal balancing act.

"I never wanted it to be fifty-fifty [comedy and drama] or make sure each scene has some sort of moment of levity," Raiff said. 

"I think all the characters have a sense of humour, and I think that was a major part of it. They like to laugh, so there are times to laugh."

In the pilot, there's a standout moment where Hal stubbornly refuses to leave a deeply uncomfortable situation, and somehow, it lands as both absurd and moving.

"It's not meant to be a gag," Raiff explained. "It's a very beautiful metaphor for their relationship that he's like, 'I'm not here'. And it's like, yeah, dude, you're right there! You're in the middle of all of this."

Just when you start to feel attached to Hal and Harper in the present day, the show introduces a new emotional layer: their younger selves. Through a series of carefully placed flashbacks, we're invited to understand them — and their trauma — in a deeper, more nuanced way.

The actors also play childhood versions of themselves in the show. Image: Stan

"I want people to see another dimension to both of these characters," Raiff said. "When you go back to the present after staying in the past for a while, you start to see Hal and Harper in a bit of a different way, and I think that's good."

For both actors, Hal & Harper was a rare opportunity to explore characters who feel painfully, beautifully human. There are no perfect protagonists here — just people trying to make sense of the mess they've inherited.

"I do put myself in all my characters," said Reinhart. "So when I watch Hal and Harper fight on screen, I see a toxic version of myself screaming at the brother I never had."

Still, she never judges Harper. And neither do we. Because for all her flaws — and there are many — Harper is recognisable. She's a woman doing her best with the hand she was dealt, carrying the kind of childhood wounds that don't just fade with age.

"I felt really honoured to play such a real woman," Reinhart said. "I think a lot of time movies steer away from the ugly parts of human beings, and I think indie filmmaking goes in, pushes deeper into those flaws.

"You're judging all of them, but… you're just judging them so much less because you feel like you're actually looking into their eyes."

Raiff agrees. "They're not autobiographical," he said of Hal and Harper, "but they're based on parts of myself I always come back to, and parts I can't stand — but try to have empathy for."

The pair bonded over a "healing trip" before the shoot began. Image: Getty

That emotional truth was grounded long before the cameras started rolling. Reinhart and Raiff met over coffee (bonding over their mutual disappointment when the café didn't have oat milk), then went on a healing trip to Mount Shasta — the kind of deeply woo-woo experience that sounds like a plot line from the show itself.

"We were both going through emotional breakups," Reinhart said.

"I go every year to work with a healer I know, and I invited Cooper. We did individual healing, then a group healing. We had time to get to know each other over the course of a year, and that was extremely helpful."

That kind of emotional safety — the space to be vulnerable, flawed, and real — bleeds into every frame of Hal & Harper. And it's what makes it linger long after the final episode.

Asked what she'd tell her younger self, Reinhart didn't hesitate.

"You're gonna feel very different from a lot of people, and that's very okay," she said. 

"I think I spent a lot of time judging myself when I was young as to why I was not the way that people were portrayed on the Disney Channel. I wasn't the social butterfly. I didn't know why I was like that. But ultimately, I'm still the same. And that's okay."

Raiff, too, had something he wishes he could have heard as a child.

"I think we don't realise how silently confused kids can be," he said. 

"Even if it's not in their heads, their bodies or souls are wondering if they did something wrong. I'd just go back and say, 'Everything's gonna be okay. You didn't do anything wrong. No one else did either. It's hard right now, but it's going to get better.'"

Because sometimes, the hardest parts of ourselves to face are the ones that stay with us. And maybe confronting them is the only way through. Hal & Harper reminds us: the things that hurt us don't just disappear — but they don't have to define us, either.

Hal & Harper premieres June 26 on Stan.

Feature image: Instagram/@lilireinhart.