You don’t get better than the casting of Showtime’s Yellowjackets. The series takes place in 1996 and 2021, following what happens when a high school girls soccer team’s plane crashes on the way to nationals and they’re forced to do whatever it takes to survive out in the wilderness for 19 months. Then, the 2021 material shows how the survivors are coping with what they’ve done as they try to outrun a tragedy that’s seemingly always on the verge of consuming them all over again.
Every single 1996/2021 pairing is so shockingly spot-on it’s impossible to play favorites, but right now we’re putting the focus on the pitch-perfect connection Melanie Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse strike as Shauna.
In celebration of Yellowjackets’ phenomenal Season 1 run on Showtime, Lynskey joined us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night. Yes, the Yellowjackets hype is mighty high right now and the show is the focus of this particular article, but trust me when I tell you, you do not want to miss the uncut version of this conversation, which you can listen to in podcast form at the bottom of this article. Yellowjackets is just one of many stellar titles on Lynskey’s filmography, and the impassioned insight she offered revisiting the steps she’s taken in her career is informative and hugely inspiring.
But right now we’re putting the spotlight on Lynskey’s collaboration with Nélisse on the role of Shauna. Yes, Shauna’s in a very different place during the tragedy and then after it, but it’s of the utmost importance that the character maintains a set of constant qualities so that the transitions from 1996 to 2021 and back again feel seamless.
I’m a very big believer that Lynskey is one of the best of the best, but one must imagine that part of the process has to involve drawing inspiration from the individual you share the role with. Sure enough, some of Nélisse’s own personal qualities wound up influencing how Lynskey tackled the role. She explained:
“Sophie has more directness in her manner. I feel like I’m quite apologetic. I mean, I’m from New Zealand and we’re all basically apologizing for our existence with every word we speak. We’re like, ‘Aw, sorry but here’s what I think.’ My own sort of energy is not quite as direct and confident as Sophie’s, and it was something that I really loved about her and I thought, ‘This is an interesting thing to try to have Shauna be a little bit more good with eye contact, a little bit stronger, not so sort of [hunched] with her body, but a bit more confident with her body,’ because there was something in Sophie that’s like an inherent strength, which I think is really nice for the character.”
Lynskey also took a moment to revisit the invaluable opportunity to see Nélisse perform during the show’s virtual table reads:
“Watching the table reads as the season went on, we all did Zoom table reads and I got to see her beautiful performance before we shot anything and was just endlessly inspired. Because I think the scripts do a really nice job of transitioning from one timeline to another, and so it was really helpful to hear Sophie’s performance and have that in mind for where to pitch mine emotionally so it would be kind of seamless. And I also just feel like I got very, very lucky. All the young actors are so great. But I just see what she does and I’m just like, ‘Okay, that’s the other half of the character.’ It’s doing 80% of the work. The other 20% is me.”
Another key element of making Yellowjackets? The secrecy. This isn’t just an epic survival story. It also appears to be an intricate mystery with surprises at every turn. What’s it like working on a show where can’t know precisely what happened to the younger version of your character? Here’s how Lynskey approached it:
“The writers were nervous initially about giving us too much information I think because they were worried we’d play it somehow, like we would give away the ending in the middle of the show. Which is understandable. And also, I think some things were still a work in progress as they were writing the season. And I want them to always feel like they can keep going and changing the story. I kept trying to say, ‘It doesn’t mean this has to be the plot for the whole series, but I just need to know where this is heading.’ There were things I made them get very specific about, and then there were things where I didn’t know a whole lot. I know sort of what their plan is. Ideally, they are hoping for five seasons, but I know they would do it in fewer if they felt like they didn’t have the story to sustain it. But I’m just nervous about jumping into something where people don’t have a plan in place, or someone had a cool idea for a pilot and they thought, ‘Hey, let’s do this cool pilot,’ and then the show gets picked up and they don’t know what the rest of the story is. So it was really important to me that they knew the arc of the entire story.”
Looking for more from Lynskey? Of course you are! Be sure to check out her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article and, again, the uncut 45-minute podcast version of this conversation is not to be missed. Lynskey covered working on Heavenly Creatures as her first film, how an audition with Daniel Day-Lewis changed the game, some Yellowjackets spoilers including a certain character’s fate, and so much more!