What Happened to Alexandra Chando? A Heist Film Director in 2026

If you were glued to ABC Family in the early 2010s, you probably remember the hook: two identical twins separated at birth, one a foster kid, one a wealthy Arizona teen, and one actress playing both of them. That actress was Alexandra Chando, and for two seasons of The Lying Game she carried a network show on double duty. Then the series was canceled, and her name slowly slipped out of the TV listings. So whatever happened to Alexandra Chando? The short answer: she moved behind the camera, and she’s been busy.

01Profile

Name

Alexandra Chando

Born

July 28, 1986, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Age

40 (as of September 2026)

Education

Liberty High School; attended Manhattan College

Breakout role

Maddie Coleman on CBS's As the World Turns

Best known for

Twins Emma Becker and Sutton Mercer on ABC Family's The Lying Game (2011–2013)

Recognition

Daytime Emmy nomination, Outstanding Younger Actress

Today

Director, producer, actress, festival leader and podcast host based between Austin and Los Angeles

A Pennsylvania kid who came up through daytime soaps and ended up leading a primetime teen drama by her mid-twenties. That’s not a common path, and it helps explain why she was so comfortable on a set by the time she decided to run one.

02The Rise: From Soap Star to Double Lead

Cutting her teeth on daytime TV

Chando started working professionally in 2002, but her real launchpad was As the World Turns, the long-running CBS soap. She originated the role of Maddie Coleman, playing the character from 2005 to 2007 and returning again from late 2009 into 2010. Soap acting is famously relentless: pages of dialogue every day, little rehearsal, and constant turnover. It’s a boot camp, and Chando clearly thrived in it. According to Wikipedia’s summary of her career, the role earned her a Daytime Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Younger Actress category.

Guest spots and genre work

Between soap stints and after, she picked up guest roles on primetime shows including Medium, Castle, Hawaii Five-0, and The Vampire Diaries, along with a lead in the indie horror film The Bleeding House (2011). It was the typical résumé of a working actress looking for her big break, and that break came quickly.

Two roles, one actress

In 2011, ABC Family premiered The Lying Game, loosely based on Sara Shepard’s novels (the author behind Pretty Little Liars). Chando was cast as both Emma Becker, a foster kid who discovers she has a twin, and Sutton Mercer, the privileged sister whose life Emma steps into. Playing opposite yourself sounds like a gimmick, but it’s technically demanding work: double the scenes, split-screen blocking, tennis-ball eyelines and stand-ins. Fans latched on to the show’s twisty mysteries and to Chando’s ability to make the two sisters feel like distinct people. The series ran from August 2011 to March 2013, 30 episodes over two seasons.

03The Turning Point: After The Lying Game

The Lying Game ended on a cliffhanger, and fans hoped for a third season. It didn’t come. In July 2013, Chando confirmed that the network had canceled the show after two seasons. For a lead actress, that kind of cancellation can be a strange moment: you’ve just proven you can carry a series, but the series is gone.

She kept working. There were recurring and guest parts in shows like VH1’s Hindsight, a return to genre TV, a role as Natalie Sheffield in Amazon’s Sneaky Pete in 2019, and TV movies such as The Baby Proposal. But she was no longer the name on top of a network drama, and to casual viewers it looked like she had faded out. What was actually happening was a slower pivot that she’d been planning for years.

• 2002Begins acting professionally.
• 2005Originates Maddie Coleman on CBS's As the World Turns.
• 2007Earns a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress.
• 2011The Lying Game premieres on ABC Family with Chando playing twins.
• 2013The series ends after two seasons; Chando confirms the cancellation in July.
• 2018Directs the short film LPM, Likes Per Minute.
• 2019Plays Natalie Sheffield on Amazon's Sneaky Pete.
• 2020Launches The Her Voice Podcast.
• 2022Takes part in the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Directors Program.
• 2025Releases her feature directing debut, The 8th Day, and appears in Netflix's Bad Thoughts.

04Learning to Direct

The Lying Game as film school

Here’s the part of the story that most “where are they now” pieces skip. According to Chando’s own official biography, it was playing the dual roles on The Lying Game that sparked her interest in directing. When you’re in nearly every scene, often twice, you end up watching every technical decision up close. Her site says she went on to log more than 400 hours shadowing directors on network productions while she continued to act.

Shorts, pilots and a festival home

Her first directing credit was the 2018 short LPM, Likes Per Minute, which premiered at the Mammoth Film Festival and, per her site, also screened at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts festival. She followed it with The Dinner Party, an unscripted project, the short Deserted (2021), and an independent pilot called NSFW. In 2022 she was part of the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Directors Program, one of the industry’s pipelines for new TV directors.

Building a platform for women filmmakers

Alongside her own work, Chando built something for other people. She’s the Executive Director of HER VOICE, an initiative aimed at creating access and opportunities for emerging female filmmakers. In 2020 she launched The Her Voice Podcast under Kevin Connolly’s Action Park Media, and she co-hosts it with Blair Bomar, talking with women about the wins and the obstacles of working in film and TV. At the Mammoth Film Festival she has moderated an annual Her Voice conversation; the March 2024 edition featured Bella Thorne, Rachel Bilson and Shelley Hennig, among others.

It’s worth pausing on how unglamorous a lot of this is. Festival operations, podcast booking, panel moderating. None of it puts your face on a billboard. But it builds relationships, and it gave her a network of people who’d eventually help her make a feature.

05What She Is Doing Now

The 8th Day: her feature debut

The biggest headline of Chando’s recent career is The 8th Day, her first feature as a director. It’s a crime thriller set in West Texas in 1994, following two small-time crooks, an older woman hiding a dark past, a young woman desperate to get out of town, and a check-cashing store full of money, all colliding over eight days. The cast includes Phoebe Tonkin (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals), Darren Mann, Mustafa Speaks, Valerie Mahaffey, Lindsey Morgan and Tanner Beard.

The film played the festival circuit, including the Chelsea Film Festival and the Dallas International Film Festival, and was released on demand in spring 2025. Local coverage highlighted that it was made with a female-led production team. Speaking to CBS Austin, Chando described what drew her to a heist movie as a first project:

The idea that the very first thing I directed was maybe not something people thought a woman ‘should’ or ‘would’ direct—that’s what drew me to it. — Alexandra Chando to CBS Austin, April 2025

She also credited her acting years, telling the station that on-set experience and knowing how to communicate with actors were huge for her.

A Texas chapter

One of the more surprising details: Chando now splits her time between Austin and Los Angeles, according to her website. She told Spectrum News in May 2025 that when she moved to Texas from LA she was inspired by the stories and landscape, and that the script for The 8th Day happened to be set there. Ironically, the production mostly shot in New Mexico because of tax incentives, which Spectrum noted. She said she’d love to shoot more films in Texas and work with the local film community.

Still acting, too

She hasn’t given up acting. In 2025 she appeared as Kerri Sorenson in Bad Thoughts, comedian Tom Segura’s dark-comedy anthology series, which premiered on Netflix on May 13, 2025. It was a nice reminder for longtime fans that she’s still very much at home in front of the camera.

Festivals and the podcast

Chando continues to be listed as Festival Manager of the Mammoth Film Festival and Executive Director of HER VOICE, and she still hosts The Her Voice Podcast. Her site also describes her working as a host, emcee and panel moderator at industry events. She keeps a fairly low public profile beyond her professional work, and we couldn’t find confirmed details of a new directing project announced for 2026, so keep an eye on her official channels for what comes next.

06Summary

Alexandra Chando didn’t disappear after The Lying Game. She did what a lot of actors talk about and few actually pull off: she turned years of watching from the other side of the camera into a directing career, then built community infrastructure so other women could do the same.

If you’ve been wondering where the girl who played both twins went, the answer is that she’s the one calling “action” now. And if you liked the twisty tension of The Lying Game, a heist movie from its lead actress might be exactly your kind of rabbit hole.