“Yellowjackets” may be enjoying a well-deserved cool-down period following its fiery Season 2 finale, and the shocking main character death that’s come to define it. But with a not-so-secret bonus episode already on its way — and the likelihood of Emmy nominations this summer — it’s safe to say Showtime’s ’90s-set cannibalism drama is as buzzy as ever.
The widely worshipped sophomore outing of TV’s preeminent soccer-team plane-crash saga aired less than a week before IndieWire’s Consider This Event on June 3 in Los Angeles. During a panel moderated by IndieWire Editor in Chief Dana Harris-Bridson, “Yellowjackets” actress Christina Ricci, music supervisor Nora Felder, and executive producer/director Karyn Kusama debriefed their respective artistic preparations and processes for Season 2.
“I had already seen the first season, but I just sat for two days with no sleep and binged it because I wanted to see everything all at once — to really study the characters,” newcomer Felder said of her first 48 hours on the job, describing herself as a “new kid on the block” who was “petrified” by the show’s scope.
“I wanted to support the decisions, first and foremost, of the showrunners because this is their baby,” the former “Stranger Things” music supervisor said.
“Yellowjackets” is overseen by creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, as well as co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco: all three of whom executive produce alongside “Jennifer’s Body” genius Karyn Kusama. Teamwork comes up as much as you’d expect for a show that’s at least tangentially about athletics, and the overarching vision is front of mind for a cast and crew rendering such a complex, (seemingly) supernatural mystery.
“Every non-writing EP finds a different way to be useful or take a more backseat role,” Kusama said during the panel. She directed the Season 2 finale, titled “Storytelling,” as well as the 2021 pilot episode — and shares Felder’s appreciation for the collaboration facilitated by TV.
“For directors who are control freaks like me, it’s actually really important to practice that,” she continued. “I learn a lot from recognizing that I’m not the final word sometimes, and I’m not always in control though I wish I could be. That’s really good for me. I always say, I look at my work in television as spring training for a marathon, and my features are my marathons. But the spring training is essential to what I do. ”
To hear Kusama, Felder, and Ricci tell it, relinquishing control has become something of a central component to the “Yellowjackets” creative pipeline.
“It’s one of the really incredible things about television that when you have spent as much time being an actress in film as I have, it’s a totally new style of acting,” echoed Ricci, who plays the adult version of Sammi Hanratty’s screw-loose Misty Quigley for the show.
“There are so many different muscles you have to use, mainly to tackle this open-endedness of the character,” the actress said, emphasizing the unique challenge of playing someone whose story is still being written. “You don’t know where they’re going or what situations they’ll be in, and as an actor in film, I think you make a lot of rules for your character — and, in TV, you can’t.”
“The biggest surprise for me was realizing that Misty was a comedic character,” Ricci continued. “I didn’t think she was funny in the pilot, and that was the only thing I read of her. Then, the first script for Episode 2 of Season 1, she was funny. I didn’t realize I was going to be doing that so that was certainly a surprise.”
“One of the most defining things for me playing Misty is her immaturity and her inability to deal with any real emotions,” Ricci said. “The most emotional we saw her in the first season was when she was going to lose [her African grey parrot] Caligula, and she just throws a tantrum. Someone who avoids emotion also avoids a lot of awareness of how they’re feeling.”
Although Ricci says film has allowed her to be “a little bit more selfish as an artist,” Misty has forced her performance to continually evolve outside her comfort zone as an actress. Ricci draws a psychological boundary by not reading some of the horror series’ more disturbing scenes, particularly those involving children (“At a certain point, as a human, you decide what you can put yourself through and what you can’t and that’s OK!” she noted during the panel), but broadly she embraces the challenge.
“The show’s emotional intensity exists even in things that are more mundane, and it’s because of the execution of the show and the talent behind it,” Ricci said.
That faith in the collective talent of the “Yellowjackets” squad seems to underpin work at nearly every stage of production. Even without final cut, Kusama says she attempts “to create bridges visually, sonically, with music, with performative gestures or instincts between two actors playing the same character” as a matter of accounting for the show’s time jumps — even during edits she’s not privy to.
“I try to create those bridges, recognizing that I turn in a director’s cut that might have different uses of those transitional strategies than what ends up in the final cut,” Kusama said. “But I hope by just offering some of those transitions there’s a better ability for the showrunners to put together in that final cut of the episode the most cohesive expression of the two timelines.”
Similarly, Felder has — as the younger Yellowjackets might say — “let the wilderness decide” when it comes to choosing the perfect needle drops for the ’90s throwback.
“I remember one episode I picked these songs, and thought, ‘These are all great, I’m good. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, salted caramel — they have every flavor they can pick to enhance the emotion,” Felder shared. “But then I remember [Genevieve Butler], who is part of our picture editing team, she came up with an idea and I was like, ‘Forget mine. Put that one first, put that one first!’ Because we’re all wanting what’s best for the show.”
Watch the full video from IndieWire’s Consider This Event above.
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