First Impressions: Marianly Tejada & Mark Mckenna

American Studies sets up a conversation with co-stars Marianly Tejada and Mark McKenna, from Peacock’s latest Breakfast Club style thriller One Of Us is Lying, based on the 2017 novel by Karen McManus.

Words by Dio Anthony

Tejada plays over-achiever Bronwyn Rojas and McKenna plays social outcast Simon Kelleher. The two come together at our request, with a provided list of questions. For a conversation that shapes up to be about growing up outside of the United States, family and perfecting the American accent.

MARK MCKENNA: The first question. Let's see. A lot of the series deals with the differences between its main characters and their personal lives. What was your high school experience like? Did you attend high school in America?

MARINALY TEJADA: No. I went to high school in the Dominican Republic. Very different, because I'm from a very small town on the island. My high school was tiny, and I kind of went to school with the same people from fifth grade, up until I graduated high school. It was very much like a family. I would see my cousins every day at school. I feel like there's less, you know, of the cliques that you see in America. Everybody just blends in. You just know everybody so well. But I was similar to Bronwyn in a sense. Like her, I feel like I was very much all about my academics, but I managed to have a social life. I didn't take it as seriously as she did.

MCKENNA: For me, in Ireland–– It's very, I mean, I feel like, no matter where you go to high school, it's very stereotypical, clique-y stuff. I was extremely under the radar. I think I wasn't really in any certain clique. I wasn't sporty, and I didn't get into music till I was like 16 or 17..

TEJADA: What grade is that for you guys? A junior?

MCKENNA: We have first year, second year, third year, fourth year, fifth year and then six year's your last school year. I actually have no idea what that is in America. Anyway, I was very much under the radar, I didn't like school at all. I didn't try, I didn't do anything. I didn't study for exams. I would show up and just kind of write down what I knew when it came to exams. I practically scraped by everything in school.

TEJADA: That's surprising actually, because you're one of the most intelligent people I know. I feel like you're very intelligent. That just goes to show that school's not for everybody. And I think, you know, as long as you really work hard at whatever it is that you want to do, and identify that early…

MCKENNA: I probably come across intelligent to you because we're not talking about stuff like algebra and rock erosion and geographies.

TEJADA: How much do we actually need those things on a daily basis is the question?

MCKENNA: Definitely! Not at all.

TEJADA: Not for us. Someone else does the math in our industry. It's really not us! How did you get into music then? You mentioned you didn't get into music until 16 or 17.

MCKENNA: Yeah. I was going home from school one day and they had Fall Out Boy on the radio. I didn’t know what it was about, but I really liked the sounds of the drums in the song. I begged my parents for months to let me learn the drums after that. I grew up in an estate, well that’s what it’s called in Ireland. In American an estate is very fancy. My house was attached to my neighbor’s house. So it was very loud for him when I would play the drums. Eventually my parents gave in and got me a beginner’s drum kit, and I began to learn the guitar and drums. I just kept going and tried to learn every instrument I had access to.

TEJADA: Wait, so you, you play the drums still?

MCKENNA: Yeah. I haven’t played drums in a very long time because I don't have a place to play them. I’d tell you I could play, but If I was to sit down at a drum kit, you'd be like–– this guy cannot play drums. It's one of those things where like––to me, I'm like I can play drums and then I meet drummers and I see them play drums and I'm like, oh, I cannot play drums.

TEJADA: I think that’s the beauty of it in a sense, because it's one instrument. People just really go at it in their own way. Do you have a favorite instrument that you like to play?

MCKENNA: Probably the Piano or anything case-based sounds nicest, and you can get the notes that sound kind of like voice of chords. There's codes on a piano that you could play very easily. But then you try doing it on a guitar and your hand starts to cramp up, doing the weirdest shapes you've ever seen.

TEJADA: How crazy, that's so interesting. I think I knew you played the piano, but definitely not the drums. That’s a big surprise.

MCKENNA: Well, I dunno if I can even say I play drums anymore, to be honest. I'll just say I play..

TEJADA: Just keep saying you play the drums and that's it. I feel like it might be the same case with you and the drums when I say I play the guitar. I know my chords and all of that, but I don't put enough time into it really. But I’ll say this–– I really enjoy playing the guitar. It's kinda nice honestly to have something that is not results oriented in life, sometimes. If I suck at it, it's whatever, nobody gets to see it.

MCKENNA: Yeah. That was a big thing for me in music as well. I didn't get lessons because it becomes a chore. Then It becomes something you have to do, versus something that you just want to do.

TEJADA: So, you're self-taught?

MCKENNA: Yeah. Although, my dad taught me the basics of guitars, but then the rest of it was me wanting to find a chord or something and ending up googling it. You can just see what it is on Google images. You see what someone's hand is doing.

TEJADA: When you hear a chord now, can you identify it?

MCKENNA: No, not at all. I, I have friends who can do that, but I'm very bottled up.

TEJADA: Yeah, I feel like that's like the ultimate, I dunno—level of..

MCKENNA: Music?

TEJADA: Yeah, literally. This next one’s a good question. Do you have any regrets that you'd like to discuss?

MCKENNA: A bit, yeah. A big regret of mine would be when I was about 12 or 13 and obviously a lot shorter, and considering it was 12 years ago, quite chubby. I had this disgusting mullet during picture day at school. So there's a picture of me, in my parents' house, of this chubby child with a mullet. It’s one of those things that when people come over, that’s a picture that I put face down on the table.

TEJADA: They still have it there?

MCKENNA: Oh, it's on the wall. It’s a big picture.

TEJADA: That’s brilliant. I feel like I've heard about this photo and now I need to see it. I also can't picture you being chubby at all. You’re so slim. You know, I'm looking at your haircut as we're speaking about mullets. You just got a haircut. It looks really good. I feel like you're always trying new stuff with your hair. It's really cool.

MCKENNA: I get very bored of hair very quick and I don't know why. Throughout my entire life, I’ve changed my hair completely about every six months.

TEJADA: I wish I had the luxury of doing that. I mean, I can do whatever the hell I want..

MCKENNA: More expensive?

TEJADA: I think it’s just that in the industry, when you have a very specific look, it narrows down your options for some reason. It also takes longer for your hair to grow. Maybe I should just shave my head.

MCKENNA: I have a barber, and sometimes I'll just go to him like––what do you think would look cool? And he'll just do something..

TEJADA: That's cool. I mean, that's what he does. I'm pretty sure that he doesn't get enough people that sit there and are like, I trust you to do whatever.

MCKENNA: What about you? Do you have any broad regrets that you would like to discuss?

TEJADA: I have various specific regrets. No, I'm kidding. I think the whole concept of regret for me, is about learning from everything. I think it’s important to not make regrets feel like an ideology. Or something that you end up holding onto. Because you learn from them, and they make you who you are and have brought you to where you are today.

MCKENNA: No regrets, no regrets! There's a guy who said something, and I already know I’m going to butcher this––He said a thing once about how; regret is hanging onto the idea that you can change the past, and the way to get rid of it is just realizing that you can’t. Or something like that. I remember it was very mind-blowing when I first heard it… So mind blowing that I've completely forgotten what he said. Exactly.

TEJADA: I would agree with that. I feel like it teaches you something as well. So hopefully if you want to cling onto something, it's like, okay, what can I learn from this? Then you kind of let it go once you realize what you can change in future instances. The past is very much gone. Like that mullet, it’s the past.

MCKENNA: Yeah. That'll mysteriously go missing from my parents house one day.

TEJADA: Speaking of photos… When did you start taking photos?

MCKENNA: When did I start taking photos? Probably in like 2017 or 2018. I found a film camera in my attic and my dad was like, oh yeah, I bought this camera in Paris in the seventies, but just never used it. He gave it to me. He wasn’t sure how it worked or anything and told me I’d have to figure it out. I've been using it ever since. Then I have that very fancy camera I used for the photographs. That was a gift from when I did Wayne. One of the camera operators, Brent had that, that was his camera and he’d bring it into set and I was obsessed with it. I think towards the end of the shoot, he wanted to sell it. So he could buy a different camera and Shawn Simmons, the writer of Wayne bought it off him. He gave it to me as my wrap gift, which is very, very sweet.

TEJADA: Oh, how cool. That's special.

MCKENNA: How about you?

TEJADA: I feel like I'm in a way just getting into it. I’ve always known that I liked taking photos. I started shooting film around 2017 as well, in New York. it started with Polaroids. I was really obsessed with Polaroids and I would buy disposables too. I really like capturing candid moments. I think that's what really makes me just pull out a camera and shoot. Then these opportunities come around where I get to shoot Mark McKenna. Why not? You're so photogenic.

MCKENNA: I an list three or four people in the cast who are more photogenic than me, starting with all of them.

TEJADA: I would disagree with that. I do think everyone's photogenic in this cast. Or maybe I just like everybody and I just see them through different eyes. But I think you are at top of the list, up there somewhere. Maybe you and Melissa (Collazo), because Melissa has this very symmetrical face.

MCKENNA: What was it like growing up in the Dominican Republic and how did you parents get to America?

TEJADA: That's a great question. Well, my mom has been a US resident since her late teens. She lived in New York during that time. She eventually went back home, but she was smart enough to be like, okay, I know the opportunities that my kids could have in the states. So, because she was a resident, whenever she was going to give birth, because we're five at home, I'm the youngest of five kids. She would just travel to the states and give birth in the USA. She wanted us to have the opportunity to study in the USA. The DR, as much as it is as beautiful country, the opportunities are limited. She wanted us to have the option if we chose it. I have another sibling who’s a surgeon in my country and decided to stay home in the Dominican Republic. I have four siblings, there’s three boys and then my sister and I.

MCKENNA: How many of them live in America?

TEJADA: There’s three that live in the US.

MCKENNA: That's crazy that your brother is a surgeon.

TEJADA: Yeah! I mean, I really am the least smartest person out of my siblings.

MCKENNA: Maybe you’ll play a surgeon some day.

TEJADA: I hope so. That'd be good. My dad's a doctor as well, so I would actually love playing a doctor. My dad's a pediatrician and then my brother is a surgeon.

MCKENNA: So you just come from family of geniuses basically.

TEJADA: And then my other brother is a computer engineer. He’s really brilliant. He was always naturally good at math, like, who is naturally good at math? He would not study at all and just ace absolutely everything. He was just one of those people.

MCKENNA: I didn't know you came from such a smart family. Like, what? I didn't know you had any siblings either.

TEJADA: I know! What did we talk about on set?

MCKENNA: Yeah, I don't know. I always just saw it as you and Jatnaa (Marte) always together for some reason.

TEJADA: Oh yeah. Well Jatnaa is an acquired sister and she's absolutely one of my closest friends. I feel like we were brought up in very similar ways. That's why we connect in such a deep way and have so much in common. We're also two Dominican actresses trying to navigate the industry. But yeah, going back to growing up in the Dominican Republic, having a big family was a big part of it. We’re from a small town where everyone knows each other, but I think my favorite thing and my most memorable moments are memories of times spent with my extended family. Literally chasing chickens, or being by the water, at the beach. That’s what comes to mind. What about for you? Did you grow up in Dublin?

MCKENNA: Yeah, I mean, I still live there. I don't have any family in America and a lot of my family is still in Dublin. Some of my family is in Newcastle in England. Growing up in Ireland, growing up in Dublin specifically, a lot of people picture it as this big countryside. Solid green hills and stuff like that. Which a lot of it is, but it’s also very much a city. Like I very much so, consider myself–– a city kid. I didn't grow up in the city, but I grew up in a suburb just outside the city. So all that farmland stuff, I just don't know any of it. There's one farm near where I live and when we were younger, we would break into it to jump on the hay bales and we’d get chased out. That’s my only farm memory.

Where I grew up in Ireland, it’s very much like you were saying, a small town. But the ceiling isn’t very high if you want to do anything creative. It's just the thing that when you first get into any sort of creative field in Ireland, the first thing anybody is going to tell you is that you need to leave Ireland. And it's very, very true. On one hand it's nice because it's a very small community. There’s a lot going on creatively too. It’s very easy to meet or connect with somebody. But if you if you stay there for too long, you can get stuck in Ireland and you'll only ever work in Ireland. I feel very lucky that I've gotten to work in America because it's the tough thing to do. Going over to England, we can do that easily and work our way up from there. But trying to break your way into American media, that’s one of the tougher things to do. I feel very lucky that I've been able to do that.

TEJADA: How did that happen for you? It's crazy to me that you still live in Ireland because I feel like you're always in the US and you're always working, which is great.

MCKENNA: I was in LA at the beginning of the pandemic. I had to leave because my visa was running out and then I was stuck in Ireland for about a year because the borders were closed to everywhere. I just got very, very lucky this year considering the state of the world, and was able to work in Liverpool. Then I went straight to New Zealand to work. Then I came straight to Toronto to work. But yeah, it's one of those things where like, I think I don't mind. My first American job; Wayne, we filmed it in Canada, but it was for an American company and everything.

TEJADA: How did you work on your American accent? Because it’s really good.

MCKENNA: Thank you. I’ve done a lot of work on my American Accent, it used to be really bad. I used to send in tapes to my manager in the accent years ago and he’d suggest me doing it again. I'm not saying this for you to say anything, but my American accent isn't perfect. I feel like it's quite weird. Barrett’s(Carnahan) wife Nina, thought I based my American accent off of somebody, because she thought it was so strange and that it sounds like I was mimicking somebody specific.

TEJADA: But I feel like you know my thoughts on that––because I also had to work on my accent. I know it's not perfect and I'm still working on it. I feel like when you say an “American accent” there isn’t a standard American accent. There are so many regions and so many parts. I feel like it's all blending now and everything's becoming more global. I love that you said you just kept working on it. There’s this impression that things just kind of happen naturally, or that you’re born gifted. You have to work on things!

MCKENNA: Yeah. I feel like even when we did the pilot, my accent wasn't that good back then. So, when I rewatch the pilot, there’s moments where I’m picking at it.

TEJADA: I feel like that's me as well, because I don't know the rhythm of words. A big thing for me is operative words. Sometimes it's not even the pronunciation itself, but the rhythm of the word, because it's so different from my Dominican Spanish. There's this one word in episode two, season one that I'm just like… f*ckkkk. But, there's always room from progress.

MCKENNA: I sometimes will say a word and I'll pronounce it the way we pronounce it. And in Ireland and someone will be like, oh no, you say it like this in America. Like I remember I was working on something, and had to say aluminum. We say it pronounced alemeniam, and it was tricky for me to remember that. That’s the thing about accents, it’s not hard to get the inflections or whatever the sounds are. The difficult part is making it sound like it’s actually your voice, and not someone just doing an accent. Was it in any way helpful to you that you spent so much time in New York?

TEJADA: I feel like Ohio was better in that sense for me because in New York, a lot of people speak Spanish and you can really just get away with being in certain parts of the city where you don't even need to speak English at all. It's a melting pot. So there are so many accents coming together as well. But in Ohio, you go and it's really just a deep dive into deep English and American accents and the region’s accent. People speak really fast at whatever pace is natural to them. I feel like that really helped my ear. I feel like when you learn a language at a very young age, your ear gets used to it, and the accent is almost nonexistent. I went back home to the Dominican Republic to finish high school and it kind of just went away. Like, the language remained, but the accent was still heavy when I came back to the states after high school. So it's, it's still a work in progress. When I go back home for a long period of time and I come back to the states, I feel like the accent takes two steps back and I have to work on it again.

MCKENNA: You know, I’ve always found it funny how the Ohio accent is like the standard American accent. When you watch movies that are based in America, but doesn't really specify where in America they are, in my head I’m always thinking they’re in Ohio. Ohio is just the gateway to America, to me, for some reason.

TEJADA: I feel like it’s because Ohio is in the center, where it’s not the South or the East but somewhere in between.

MCKENNA: I have a very specific idea of the DR. Whenever I think of it, I just think––very small island, because of the way you've described it to me. What would be the first thing you think of when you think of it?

TEJADA: Definitely family. But I know family is very specific to me. If I had to show people in words what it’s like to grow up in the DR or be from the DR, I just think about the energy. Very hospitable. People with no resources will give you whatever food they have. They will cook for you. They’ll make you coffee. They will give you whatever they have. They’re just welcoming and hospitable that way. I think that’s the most beautiful thing that Dominicas and that the DR has to offer.

MCKENNA: Hmm. I’ve always thought just from how it's been described to me from you–– I always think of an island that you could walk from one end to the other, which I know is not true.

TEJADA: It's an island shared with Haiti as well. So, we only have a portion of the island in the East, and then Haiti is on the West. It's a tiny island, but it's not that tiny. I feel like if you drive the length of the island, it would maybe take about a 12 hour drive or something on those lines. It's quite big.

MCKENNA: See, Ireland is very small. If you drove from East to West, it’d probably take you about four hours. North to South would take longer, but if you left very, very early in the day, you could maybe drive from one end of the country and then back in one day. It's very much like an island in that sense. It's tiny.

TEJADA: That’s insane to me. That’s not what I pictured it in my head. Sounds similar to the DR but with a different shape.

MCKENNA: How often would you go home to the Dominican Republic?

TEJADA: At least once a year, If not more. Wait, when do you go back to Ireland next? I'm over here getting ready to ask you if you go back often––But like, that's your home..

MCKENNA: Hopefully tomorrow, actually, if I can travel. I was supposed to go last week. Whenever I go back, I'll be there till the new year. Over the last year, I spent no time in Ireland. I love going back to it, but if I’m there for any longer than a few months, I get farsickness and start wanting to get out of there. I think the population’s like 4 million. I think of London alone, not even England as a whole. London’s population is four times the size of Ireland.

TEJADA: Insane. The DR is 11 million last time a census was done.

MCKENNA: That's way more than I expected. Way more. We're going to expect a

TEJADA: I'm definitely trying to get on my geography and history, and all those things.

MCKENNA: I Actually hope those stats that I was just throwing out there are true. That's what it was last time.

TEJADA: They’re going to go on google and just go, yeah, they have no idea what they’re saying…

MCKENNA: What’s the last thing you Googled?

TEJADA: It was actually how to set up my spectrum equipment. I just moved into a new spot and I had no wifi set-up yet. I still don’t, because I’m missing a router and you need both a modem and router. I kind of knew that, but I thought it was all one thing now. It’s 2021, why should you need two boxes? How about you?

MCKENNA: Very exciting. The last thing I Googled was…

TEJADA: The population of Ireland? [laughs]

MCKENNA: Right? So last the thing I googled before that was actually pretty boring. The last thing I googled was how to make my hotel wifi quicker. Because my hotel wifi is very bad. Then I have this thing called an OP-1, a synthesizer, and you can load samples on it, and it wasn’t working. So, now I’m just in a Rabbit hole on google about how to fix that. It's just a lot of people on Reddit giving me different solutions.

TEJADA: Oh, shit, that’s something that you upload samples of music into?

MCKENNA: Yeah. So, if someone’s playing a key of a piano, it would translate it, I suppose, across an entire keyboard. So you can play it as if it's an actual yard. It’s become a whole thing. I've spent hours on Reddit now trying to figure out how to get it working. That’s Reddit though, you have any questions? Somebody on Reddit knows the answer!

TEJADA: I’m going there right now, actually

MCKENNA: Reddit is, I would honestly say, going onto the next question on the list, that Reddit might be my favorite thing on the internet. I don’t ever just google Reddit and look through it. But whenever I have a question, Reddit is always where I end up. There’s just always somebody on Reddit who knows the answer to what you're going through.

TEJADA: I don't know where I've been that I kind of didn't know that..

MCKENNA: Sometimes I'll look up a question and some Reddit link will just show up. And sometimes if I'm looking something up and I can't find the answer and I get really desperate, I will literally Google; how do I do this/Reddit, to find out what Reddit has to say about it.

TEJADA: Because you know It's going to be in there. Man, how good to trust on Reddit. I’m thinking… What do I do on the internet? Probably just Google things that I need to know. But, there's this one blog called BrainPickings where this writer takes excerpts of poems or books and she writes a piece on them. I don't read it every day, but I try and start my mornings with reading some of her posts because it’s really good.

MCKENNA: Would it be an excerpt of a long poem, or would she just do a whole piece on a full, pretty, short poem?

TEJADA: It depends on the poem. She goes with classic poems, poems are more known, but also smaller ones. So it depends on the piece. She's done both of those things that you just described. For instance, she’s done speeches before. She’ll find big, important speeches and find these cool things about them. Sometimes paintings as well. I don't know how she does it, but she has this eye and ear sensitivity to good pieces of art. She writes amazing things about them. Like really insightful things and it's really an uplifting read when you go in there.

MCKENNA: I always find people like that to be like the coolest people. Someone who doesn't exactly take part in something, someone who's into things like art, who might not paint, but they're so passionate about it that they write about it, and explain why it's so important. Rather than being like, this is beautiful. Figure it out for yourself.

TEJADA: I know, and I don't want to sound cliche-ish or corny, but I feel like it's an art form on its own. Her writing. It's like curating almost, because there's so much out there and to pick from. I feel like she goes by instinct, which is how I would think most artists operate from, or like who the fuck knows. But I imagine maybe she reads something and she's like, oh, this hits home somehow. Or it's sparking something in me. And then she goes and writes these incredible things about it.

MCKENNA: If I was to meet somebody like that, I would be incredibly intimidated, feeling they’d be so, so much more cultured. I find a poem or a book, and I read it and I dwell on it for like six months. I'm like, this is my life. This is my personality. I read a Kurt Vonnegut book and I'm like, this whole book is my personality right now. Whereas other people will just read that and they're like, cool, I'm done with that and move on. Then they’re able to explain it to you. Whereas I have to sit down and dissect everything about this thing before I can even have a conversation about it.

TEJADA: I think that's really cool because it means that it affects you somehow. You're invested in that world. I’m pretty sure that’s the goal of the author.

MCKENNA: Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe they’re looking up explanations on Reddit. Because they know that the people on there, they know.

TEJADA: They’re just trying to figure it out, like the rest of us.

MCKENNA: If this woman from the blog, doesn’t have a Reddit page explaining all this stuff, then it’s not legit.

TEJADA: Then it’s not valid. You should look into it though. It's a good one.

Photographs by Mark McKenna & Marianly Tejada Marianly's hair by Cameron Rains and Makeup by Carissa Ferreri