Ahead ofYellowjackets third season, its creators hint at whats lurking in the woods.
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This interview took place atVulture Festival 2024and was published on November 25, 2024.
Were recirculating the conversation ahead of theYellowjacketsseason-three premiere on February 14.
Heres a bunch of professionals standing around, like, Hmm, should we eat out Jackies eyeballs?
And the various actors were wondering who was gonna throw up first.
(Producers ultimately decided that showing Jackies teammates ingesting her eyes would be too much.)
On a scale from 1 to 10, how gross will season three be?
If 10 is eyeballs, Lyle said, Id say were at, like, a 9.5.
With most TV shows, it has to be about the journey and not just the destination.
But you have to ensure you have a place you know youre working toward.
Every story point along the way has to build toward that.
Jonathan and Ameni, do you know what the ending is?Jonathan Lisco:Of course.
We have a very intimate process in the writers room, a very intense process.
Were all very close, also very honest with one another sometimes brutally so.
But thats the kind of room you want.
It is sort of a fun, improvisational exercise.
:Thats really a good point.
TV is a medium thats a feedback loop.
You do pivot with some regularity.
:Liv,who plays young Van, was not initially meant to be long for this world.
Liv is such an incredible actor, and they brought so much to so little in the pilot.
In that interim, we were able to see what Liv could do.
We said, We cant kill Van!
We cant do it!
And then here we are, season three!
It was similar with Laura Lee.
But then we were like, Ah, shes too good!
And then we were like, What if she tried to leave in a plane?
So she lasted eight episodes, and we are so happy for it.
:I hasten to add that some characters have died who were also very good!
:Oh, 100 percent!
:It was really heartbreaking.
And we were like, No, we dont want you to go, but we have to!
Like, we built this entire season around this!
So yeah, killing off a character means nothing but good story, and its often really heartbreaking.
I think its really lovely that the actors have started having funeral parties for each other.
Thats hilarious!A.L.
:Yeah, Ive attended several.
Theyre very closely knit, particularly our younger cast.
Luciano Leroux got a good one.
Because as soon as you get a ship together, its boring.
And They think they dont want them to die, but they do.
Is there any chance Ella will be coming back in flashbacks or anything like that?
Youre wiggling your eyebrows in a way that suggests maybe?
A.L.:Maybe.
And then you came over to her.
What did you tell her?
:Oh my goodness, I dont know if Im gonna remember it correctly!
What you told me you said was We want to see the bad one.A.L.
:We said we wanted to see the bad one and then I said, More evil.
And to be clear, we dont see the two Taissas as good and evil.
But thats a lot of things to say to an actor when theyre trying to get a shot!
She tried a couple times, and I was like, More evil!
And then she did that and I was like, Nailed it!
:I remember being in editing and seeing that moment.
And that smile seems at least, to me, to convey all that at the same time.
At this point in season one, were still not quite sure whats going on with Taissa.
Is it a psychological thing?
Is it something more supernatural tied to the woods?
Are you still trying to maintain some ambiguity there?A.L.:Absolutely.
What was the process for figuring out how to render that?A.L.
:We have an incredible special-effects team, and they took a picture of Biscuit and made the head.
And then we had to keep saying, I think it should be gooier.
Theres a lot of weird conversations that happen when were making this show.
:They 100 percent do, though in the writers room, were ahead of the actors.
Also, our actors operate differently.
They have very different processes.
So you have to take them aside and collaborate with each of them.
Unless they can emotionally invest in it, they cant do that, so its very much a push-pull.
Is that something that presents difficulty for you?A.R.
:I dont think its difficult.
Are there any younger actors who dont want to know?
Do they skip the pages that talk about their older selves?A.L.
:Yes, there are!
I dont know if I should name names.
Sure you should!A.L.
:Samantha Hanratty does not read the adult parts.
She doesnt want to know.
Lets talk about the end of thefirst episode of season two.
Did that song come from your music supervisor?
Was it something you scripted in?A.L.
How often do you script songs in?J.L.
:Not that often.
Our writers, our post producers will suggest songs.
Its not uncommon for us to audition 20 to 30 songs for a tricky sequence.
:In the pilot, we scripted in a bunch.
I know everyone says, Never script in a song!
and then we just broke the rules.
We scripted in the Liz Phair and the PJ Harvey in the pilot.
We did script in the Montel Jordan in season one.
We were like, We just have to use that.
But everything else is trial and error.
Then other things you would never dream of thinking were right will work perfectly.
We were all shocked when the Offspring was the perfect song for the reunion.
Are there times when you want a song and you just cant get the rights to it?A.L.
:That happens occasionally, and sometimes its just too damn expensive.
:Bart wrote a beautiful letter to Enya.
She basically refused us, and were not used to that, so we didnt know what to do.
And Bart wrote this really beautiful letter and then Enya said okay.
Sometimes we go out of our way.
Some people are like, Fuck yeah, cannibalism!
And then other times we have to send script pages and let them know what its gonna be.
This sequence is the first time we see actual eating of human flesh.
Its been implied throughout season one, but this is confirmation.
What conversations did you have in the writers room about when that reveal should happen?
:You nailed it: We didnt want to drag it out longer.
This was the promise of the show.
Everyone knew that, everyone understood that on some level.
Whats the point of dancing around it?
And the question which is more interesting is, Who is it?
How do they feel when it happens?
And so it became an interesting window into this friendship.
An interesting part for sure, but not the core emotional part of it.
Thats how I remember it coming to life.
That was very different in season two.
Ashley, if Im not mistaken, you look at stuff on social.A.L.
How was that to navigate in season two?
What do they like?
What do they not like?
Everyones allowed to have their opinion.
I can say with total honesty that it didnt really come up in the writers room.
Theres a difference between fan appreciation and fan service, and fan service doesnt serve anybody.
Also, people like different things.
If you listen to what this person likes, it might be something that somebody else hates.
You just have to trust that you created something people respond to and you have to keep doing it.
Im the kind of writer who sits down already hemmed in by the infinitude of choice.
Like, youre sitting there and youre like, Okay!
Theres so many ways to go.
All those pages are blank and you have to make them up.
You have to trust your own instincts.
Its all you could do.
And hopefully youll still be making something that people invest in and like.
:And we trust each other.
As Jonathan said earlier, were very honest.
Sometimes its like, Uh, I dont think thats gonna work.
So we use each other as the most important feedback loop.
Jonathan, you wrote the Jackie episode, where she is eventually eaten.
How do you figure out what that bar is?J.L.
Its a group effort.
:That said, our bar is pretty high.
Its rare that it does happen.
We have had moments.
There are a few in season three when we were like, How far is too far?
:Yeah, and jackfruits, and the various actors wonderingwho was gonna throw up first.
Heres a bunch of professionals standing around like, Hmm, should we eat out Jackies eyeballs?
We didnt think it was necessary.
So youre welcome, America!
:We did eat her face, though.
:Yes, so our line is eyeballs.
Was it only gonna be Shauna?A.L.
:It was always gonna be Shauna.
Can you talk about why?A.L.:[Hesitates.]
I didnt think that was a trick question!A.L.
Are there other meanings we can extrapolate from each of the cards they pulled?
Are they telling us something about the characters?A.L.
:Currently the queen is the only one who matters.
Its also a misdirect, right?
Was that also part of your calculus?A.L.:Yes.
What do you remember about shooting that sequence?A.L.
:It was a very difficult day of shooting.
We shot the card draw and the chase and her death all in one day.
Luckily, because it was winter, we had more night.
I dont miss the stunts I dont think we needed to see them tackle Shauna and all that.
Its difficult, the days where a character dies, because we all feel it.
And Karyn, whos an incredible director, got them to a beautiful place.
:I think it was raining too.
:It was freezing cold.
:But it was thrilling.
It was powerful to see an actor switching modes like that.
And its so difficult to play your death.
:Juliette is just so wonderfully idiosyncratic in her choices in ways that made Natalie so alive.
:We knew we were writing toward it.
Is she party-crashing because she wasnt invited?
We were like, No, no, shes not there.
She was like, Then why is Natalie seeing her?
and we were like, Well … at some point this will have pretty great significance.
In our minds this was her sort of seeing the mechanism of her own death.
We werent sure exactly when and then we realized that the hunts lining up were the perfect opportunity.
From a storytelling point of view, what better time to stop that than in its tracks?
She really has felt like she didnt deserve to be a survivor this whole time.
It felt so inevitable and beautiful and sad.
:The line that gets me is, Weve been here for years.
To me that speaks to her addiction, her inability to break free from the past.
She could never forgive herself.
Is there any protocol in terms of how you inform somebody that theyre being killed off?A.L.
:We break from protocol.
That feels strange to us.
These are our colleagues, and so we will often tell people pretty well in advance.
Sometimes that does upset them, and thats the risk we run.
But Juliette, I think, prefers doing films to television.
This was her first time being in a show that was ongoing.
She had been in some limited series.
Shes just kind of a nomad.
Sophie Thatcher is such a Natalie, Juliette is such a Natalie.
In that sort of freewheeling, nomadic, artistic drive, I think she was not upset.
She was ready to move on.
I think it worked out.
And these recurring patterns like, why would they be having a hunt as grownups?
Thats not a healthy thing, but its a thing.
:The most important line in that scene is There is no it.
It was always us.
And then Lottie says, Is there a difference?
Thats the premise of the show.
Thats the central, core question.
I want to talk a little about season three.
Anything you’re able to speak to to give us a hint of what to expect?A.L.
:This is so hard for us because I want to tell youeverythingabout season three!
What we can say is that winter is over.
Weve been saying its Yellowjacketsin full bloom.
:Normalcy is even more frightening, in a way.
Theyre there, and there is no anticipation of not being there.
What does that do to the group dynamics?
What does that do to their psyches?
:Everyone our art department, our costumers, everyone did just such outstanding work this season.
And without spoiling anything, everybody got to be super-creative, including our gross, gory special-effects people.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how gross is season three?J.L.
:It all depends on our threshold.
A.L.:Yeah.
If 10 is eyeballs, Id say were at like a 9.5.
There are some moments.
You added Hilary Swank and Joel McHale to the cast.
He was also drunk.
And I was like, You should be on the show!
and he was like, I would fucking love to be on the show!
and I was like, We actually have a part for you!
I was like, No, we really wanted you on the show!
He is, like, the hardest-working man in Hollywood.
