[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Yellowjackets” Season 3 through to Episode 9.]
“Nobody said ‘You’re gonna bite a chunk out of Hillary Swank’s arm’ when they pitched the show to me,” Melanie Lynskey told IndieWire in a recent conversation about “Yellowjackets.” In a season that has seen her character Shauna “finally able to take control of the moment,” that moment in Episode 8 marks a point of no return.
“[In episode 3], I sweep everything off the counter in this fit of rage, but for me the interesting moment was afterwards, the fact that in Shauna’s energy and body, I felt very settled,” Lynskey said. “So it was fun to play all that stuff in Episode 9 … finally she’s able to take control of the moment and to allow herself to feel the rage that’s always present, and then she’s kind of relaxed.”
Season 3, Episode 9 had the “Yellowjackets” team collaborating for a third time with director Ben Semanoff, who helmed episodes 202 and 205 and worked with Lynskey on the limited series “Candy.” Being an episodic director comes with a known territory of challenges (like the episode picking up right where Episode 8 left off, with Lynskey and Swank wrestling on the floor), but Semanoff was able to jump back in knowing how the show and its cast work best.
“One of my favorite ways to to direct, especially performance, isn’t even really to say anything. It’s to pull out a prop that maybe the performer hadn’t really imagined or thought would be part of the scene, and say, ‘What do you think about this?’ That prop was those rubber gloves,” Semanoff told IndieWire in a joint interview with Lynskey. “Melissa’s house is a really stark environment … so we have this white environment and these blue-green gloves, and blood that she’s squeezing out into the sink. It was so delicious to watch that.”
Van (Lauren Ambrose), Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Misty (Christina Ricci) walk into this bizarre tableau after apprehending Melissa (Swank). “When I watched the episode, I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of a wonderful metaphor for her journey throughout the show,’” Lynskey said. “She’s just been trying to be normal housewife — ‘Don’t look at me. Nobody notice me. I’m just gentle and sweet and not a threat to you’ — but she’s actually really vicious, and that is where she’s most at home. It’s where she feels most like herself.”
“That divide of the island allowed us to sort of really put Melanie on on a stage and say ‘What is Shauna right now?’ I don’t think she’s unraveled. I think she’s unleashed,” Semanoff added.
That journey has been building through the entire season, if not the entire series. Lynskey said that “rage bubbling to the surface” has been a recurring theme in her conversations with writers over the years, and now she’s harnessing it in both past and present.
“When it flashes back to the wilderness, that’s her and all her primal power,” Lynskey said. “Every decision she makes is powered by this very righteous energy that’s flowing through her body, and how good that feels to her to just go with that. She’s she’s dulled in the present day until she has these moments.”
One of Semanoff’s tasks in a “massive” episode for the wilderness timeline was portraying that rage through Sophie Nélisse as teen Shauna, at the height of her power — the feeling that Lynskey’s version is chasing, even if she doesn’t know it.
“There’s a parallel between her and Melissa, [who] was trapped in that same sort of bubble that she had driven herself into,” he noted. “Sending that tape and that note to Shauna is a way of starting trouble that might allow for her to come out of that, and embrace that same thing that we see Shauna embracing. She wanted to be back in the in this feral wilderness environment that I think they all blossomed in.”
As much as Shauna’s descent is central to the episode, Lynskey said “How the Story Ends” was mainly saying goodbye to Ambrose as Van — which was bittersweet for Semanoff as well after introducing her in Season 2’s “Two Truths and a Lie.”
“Lauren Ambrose is one of the greatest actors in the world, and I was finally getting to work with her, which I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager, and here we are, and it’s been taken away,” Lynskey said. “There was a lot of processing for all of us, not to mention the fact that she’s a really incredible person.”
Not for the first time, “Yellowjackets” depicts Van’s death by putting her in a plane with her younger self from the wilderness (Liv Hewson). More than anything, it’s that setting which betrays the finality of the moment.
“It was really interesting to watch those two actors both deal with the performance and with the weight of this moment,” Semanoff said. “There’s this idea that you’re speaking to yourself. But I always imagined it as a sort of inner monologue. … Liv is so great, and they got it when I explained, ‘I know you want to be sad, but you’re just a voice in adult Van’s head.’”
Uncertainty permeates the wilderness timeline, where outsiders have entered the Yellowjackets’ camp but also caught them engaging in ritualistic cannibalism (oops!). There’s Shauna’s perpetual power trip, Joel McHale’s Kodi (“Somebody you just love to hate”) ruffling feathers and meeting a grisly end, Travis (Kevin Alves) trying to kill Lottie (Courtney Eaton), and an escape attempt that feels like subterfuge and ultimately leads to heartbreak for Natalie (Sophie Thatcher).
“She has escaped such hardship in her real life before they got stranded in the wilderness, and all she wants to do is get home,” Semanoff said. “All she wants to do is guide her and her willing friends to essentially salvation, and to see her sitting on that log realizing that all hope is lost, and the snow just starting to come down, it’s just crushing.”
“Sophie’s face just crumbling, and the way she cried like a little child was so beautiful,” Lynskey added.
It may be the end for Van (and Kodi), and a proverbial end to Natalie’s quest for now, but Semanoff and Lynskey are hoping for more “Yellowjackets” and a chance to collaborate again before the series ends.
“Coming back and getting to work with Melanie again and the entire ‘Yellowjackets’ team, both in front of and behind the camera, was so wonderful,” Semanoff said. “My love for camera and my love for performers and my love for everything filmmaking comes down to story, and people that love story.”
And once again, the story put Semanoff in multiple meetings about the logistics of eating human flesh. “I’ve never bit a chunk of anybody’s skin off. What does it even look like? Is it chewy?,” he recalled. “Hillary had to chew it and then spit out. When you chew flesh like that that’s not cooked, does it break into pieces? We had so many conversations about what the material was, how would break up in her mouth, how would come out, what the spit would look like, how we would do the spittle. And so often you’re in these meetings and you’re just going, ‘Is this what we do for a living?’”
On “Yellowjackets,” it’s just another day at the office.
“Yellowjackets” is now streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME. The Season 3 finale will be available to stream on Friday, April 11.
