For nearly three decades, Melanie Lynskey has played her fair share of memorable roles. However, in the past few years, she is coming into her own, and her career is beginning to take off in a new way. With underdog powerhouse roles back to back in Yellowjackets Season 2 and The Last of Us, it’s clear that Lynskey has her pick of projects at the moment and knows where her focus lies. Lynskey shines in dark mysteries in which realistic, multifaceted women are the focus. Not only is Lynskey at her best as a key player in these pieces, but shows like this are more than welcome in the current landscape. And, thus, the Melanie Lynskey golden era has begun.
Melanie Lynskey may have been a face you knew with a name you didn’t for years, but she has been gracing our screens since she was 16 when she starred in the film Heavenly Creatures. She also popped up in other roles both before and during her decade-long run as Rose on Two and a Half Men, where she played a seemingly sweet, yet secretly manipulative stalker. This was an important mile marker on the journey to find Lynskey’s acting sweet spot. Two and a Half Men was a comedy, and Rose was a comedic character and the butt of jokes, but Lynskey proved that there was more beneath this character’s kooky surface that darkly influenced who she was.
Melanie Lynskey's 'Togetherness' Shows the Trajectory of Her Career
Lynskey eventually moved on to HBO’s Togetherness where she played Michelle Pierson, a woman dissatisfied with the state of her marriage. The role proved that while Lynskey can excel in plenty of different roles, she thrives in melancholy. This was the start of Lynskey becoming a pro at parts that fit the quiet housewife trope — but only at first glance. While she was clearly underutilized as the sweet, jilted wife in Don’t Look Up, in many ways Lynskey's role was what people may think she's bound to play on a surface level, and, of course, she did it with nuance and depth. This notion was challenged in just the right way in Castle Rock, where she played Molly, a dedicated real estate agent in a mysterious town who had her own secrets buried deep. Lynskey then played a seemingly sweet woman who was a villain in her own right, Rosemary Thomson, in Mrs. America. In retrospect, these roles feel like an increasing drum roll for what she would do next. It seems that no matter what, Lynskey seldom plays a character that lacks a deeply complicated emotional life or one who only seems to show herself through tiny glimpses. If someone can give a character life like that, why would we want to see her do anything less?
Judging by her recent roles, it’s become clear that this is where Lynskey belongs. She seems to feel at home playing a character where there’s more than meets the eye. Of course, almost any character should have a detectable inner life and past rife with memories and opinions, but Lynskey’s characters seem to have inner lives that are a bit more troubled and sometimes even sinister. Lynskey has a way about her that seems sweet and perhaps even an air of innocence that is reinforced by her soft voice and politely gentle demeanor. And, yet, she never struggles to balance this with a nuanced look into the darkness at her core and the complicated inner workings of her characters’ often disturbed brains.
'Yellowjackets' Feels Like a New Melanie Lynskey
In many ways, Yellowjackets feels like the real debut of an actor who debuted a long time ago. No longer making the most of the roles that don't make the most of her, Lynskey’s character, Shauna, is different. Much of what has happened so far for Shauna’s arc centers around how (as an adult) she seems like an ordinary, perhaps even boring, woman. She is a wife to a husband and a mother to a daughter — both of whom don’t seem to respect her and have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding her. But Shauna has suffered unspeakable trauma and harbors many dark secrets under the surface. On-screen, Lynskey plays the light facade with a complex interior well, and based on her exterior, Shauna seems like a "normal," nice person. People view her as such, and to such an extent, that she can plainly state that she killed, skinned, and served a wandering rabbit to her family for dinner or about how she hates her daughter, and her loved ones laugh like she's making a joke. As viewers, though, we know that this is the truth. Lynskey's ability to harness deep mysteriousness and serve it as dark humor is an unusually complex element to watch onscreen.
Lynskey's project, Candy, was sort of the cherry on top of Yellowjackets’ first season, and it solidified where exactly she is headed. In Candy, Lynskey plays Betty Gore, the true-crime story’s central victim who’s axed (literally) in the first episode. Typically, one has an idea of what the victim in a crime drama would be like, but Betty is far from that, troubled and disturbed, and her complexities don’t just set her apart from other characters in her position — they make her a much more compelling part of this story than they might otherwise be. With the way Lynskey plays her, Betty’s character feels like a real person. Therein lies Lynskey’s true calling in the acting world, and what makes her unique abilities so rare. Lynskey plays real people — even when the role may seem to call her to get sucked into a trope. For Lynskey’s "real" characters, there’s more often than not something a bit wrong or imperfect lurking just beneath the perfectly pleasant exterior. Lynskey has no trouble building an inner life and past and letting us, as viewers, search for it.
In a world of TV that is welcoming of the darkly complex characters that Lynskey has such a deep understanding of, it’s her time to shine. There’s no denying that we are just now seeing the beginning of Lynskey’s career peak, and she is sure to introduce us to plenty of complicated and powerful characters in the years to come.