In Season 3 of “Yellowjackets,” Shauna (played as an adult by Melanie Lynskey) went completely off the rails. Fans were fine with a show about cannibalism but not with a main character who was paranoid, violent and out of control. The ferocity of their feedback surprised cast and crew.
During a new installment of How She Did It, presented by Paramount+, Lynskey and Ashley Lyle, the Emmy-nominated drama’s co-creator and co-showrunner, broke down the shockingly brutal fight in Episode 8 between Lynskey and guest star Hilary Swank.
The Paramount+ with Showtime series, which was recently renewed for Season 4, is about a high school girls’ soccer team that crashes in the Canadian wilderness and turn feral as they struggle to survive. An older cast plays the troubled survivors as adults, for whom the past is never really past.
In Season 3, Shauna is sent an incriminating tape from her time in the wilderness and is determined to find who’s behind it. The trail leads her to ex-girlfriend Melissa (Swank), who changed her name after being presumed dead. Shauna shows up unannounced at Melissa’s house and demands answers, which leads to a vicious, down and dirty tussle.
Lyle praised the show’s stunt coordinator, Rhys Williams. “He’s wonderful. He walked everybody through it. You do it in slow motion first a few times. It was a lot of fun to watch the two of you, because once the blocking was set and you figured it out, there was sort of increasing veracity with each take. I feel like you both got really into it,” she said in discussion with Lynskey.
It was the first time that Lynskey, who played out a similarly life-or-death fight with Jessica Biel in Hulu’s “Candy” in 2o22, had met Swank.
“I didn’t know her very well at the beginning of that day,” she said of the two-time Oscar winner. “I was just like, ‘Is she fragile? How was this going to go?’ And once I realized she was really open to rolling around on the floor… By the end of it, she and I were doing so much of it. And the stunt women were amazing, and definitely did some big falls. But it was really great to just be in there with her and just really getting into it.”
Both women walk away from the confrontation, but not before Shauna takes a bite out of Melissa’s arm and force feeds her the flesh she bit off. It was a lot, even by “Yellowjackets” standards and viewers weren’t sure if they liked Shauna after that.
“I find it really interesting how put out some audience members were by how dark Shauna has gone,” Lyle said. “We always knew that this is where we were going.” She explained that the rather boring suburban mom we first meet in Season 1 “had tamped everything down and has been pretending for years that she was okay.”
Lynskey added, “I think that she’s created a very tidy little box for herself to stay within, and has really tried to have a very quiet life and just be like, ‘Don’t pay attention to me. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m fine.’ And then a couple things trigger her, and then that all goes out the window.”
“Yellowjackets” Season 3 is now streaming on Paramount+.
