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Yellowjackets shouldn't go beyond three seasons

  • Co-creator Ashley Lyle told Vulture that the Showtime series she created with husband Bart Nickerson was originally pitched for five seasons. “When buyers are hearing ideas, particularly at a network like Showtime, they want to know that you have a plan and there’s more than one season worth of story,” she said. But Lyle also said they had no interest in dragging out the story longer than necessary. To which Sarah Hagi says: "Thank God, but also I am praying, begging and hoping this show will not be longer than three seasons. I love the idea of watching these wild girls do more stupid things just because I enjoy seeing them on screen — but by next season the story will probably be tenuous. It’s already annoying that the other survivors are a mystery to us, when we know everyone else on the show knows who has survived and who has died. It’s hard to see how much further the mystery can be taken without getting into ridiculous territory. Nothing more should be happening to these women. We don’t need to see them in college or and we also shouldn’t have to wonder who the 'pit girl' was for any longer than a few more episodes in Season 2. The show has done a fantastic job at building tension, but it would be a shame for it to rely any more than it already does on what the audience doesn’t know. At a certain point, you have to put a pin in it. Let it be good, then let it die." She adds: "I don’t want to still be watching Yellowjackets in 2027."

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    • Christina Ricci had no idea what she was getting into with Yellowjackets: “I didn't really know that it was going to be folk horror,” she says. “You have to understand, we had very little information in the beginning; people played it all very close to the chest, what was going on for the rest of the season. So initially, the only aspect of that that I understood was that there would ultimately be some sort of culty thing that happens out in the woods." Ricci adds: "People really do connect with that need (Misty) has that motivates everything, which is to be accepted, to be a part of the group. But what's interesting about this character and what I think these writers do so adeptly is, they show you how badly she wants to be there, and then they show you the reason why she deserves to be kicked out...The thing I actually like most about this character is how she has that need, still. It's still the thing that — almost subconsciously, probably, at this point — drives her to operate. But she's also, after years and years of being stepped on and dismissed and not accepted and punished for who she is, very much at a point where she's like, ‘Well, no one's ever going to give it to me. So I'm going to f*cking take it.’”
    • Melanie Lynskey has always been a great actress: "Her run as adult Shauna is undoubtedly some of the best work in her career, but it is admittedly frustrating to hear people talk about her performance as if it is the first time she has ever been this good," says BJ Colangelo. "Lynskey has always been incredible, she has always been captivating, and she has always been right in front of our faces. So much of my personal ability to see myself the way I do is inspired by the ways I've seen Lynskey on screen. Because of her, I know I am able to be strong, proud, sweet, bold, angry, loving, responsible, chaotic, maternal, and insanely sexy all at once. She contains multitudes, as do I, and there's power in embracing all aspects of my character. The fact Lynskey isn't one of the most highly sought-after performers in the business is due to no fault of her own, but the ridiculous Hollywood machine that has taken decades to finally see what so many of us have known all along: Melanie Lynskey f****** rules."
    • Jasmin Savoy Brown had to juggle Yellowjackets and Scream: "We shot the pilot for Yellowjackets in late 2019 and I was shooting Sound of Violence at the same time," she says. "So I was doing both. And then 2020 happened, and Scream happened in September, October, November of 2020. And then we shot Yellowjackets in the summer of 2021. And now they’re all coming out at the same time here in 2022." As for auditioning for Yellowjackets, Brown says: "It’s so female-led and so dark and so gritty. So I did feel something special, and I knew the job was mine from the second I got the email. That’s how I’ve felt about every single thing I’ve ever booked except for my guest star on Grey’s Anatomy. I didn’t think I was going to get that, but with everything else, I just had this feeling in my stomach. I was like, 'Oh, this is mine.' And it was pretty cool because it was the hot pilot in town that year. So it was exciting to become a part of it."
    • Brown and Tawny Cypress actually bonded while filming: "When Jasmin Savoy Brown and Tawny Cypress arrived in Vancouver to film Yellowjackets, the ghastly yet winsome new Showtime ensemble series about friendship and mushrooms and homecomings and bloodlust, their early interactions were appropriately uncanny for two people tasked with playing then-and-now versions of the same troubled gal," reports The Ringer's Katie Baker. 'For starters, neither actress arrived alone. 'We were the only people that brought our cats,' recalls Brown, 27, in a Zoom conversation, 'and also, we both have a tortoiseshell cat.' They’d coincidentally booked accommodations in adjacent apartment buildings. They had very little idea of everything that their character, Taissa—a high school soccer player turned plane crash survivor turned presumptive state senator with, ah, some skeletons in the closet—would become. (They also had very little idea of everything Yellowjackets writ large would become.) They shared a landlord, and they shared strolls in a nearby park. Sometimes, when Brown was called out of town to film her harrowing half of the series in the Canadian woods, Cypress, 45, would let herself into her younger costar’s apartment."
    • Here are suggestions for casting Season 2 adult survivors: Lauren Ambrose as adult Van?

    TOPICS: Yellowjackets, Showtime, Ashley Lyle, Christina Ricci, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress