Melanie Lynskey Talks ‘Yellowjackets’ Epiphany and Mourns Her Co-Stars

[This story contains major spoilers from the season three finale of Yellowjackets, “Full Circle.”]

When actors find out they are getting killed off of Yellowjackets, they have a difficult call to make: one to their co-star, Melanie Lynskey. Given the killing spree in season three of the hit Showtime survival series, Lynskey received more than a few calls.

“They know I’m the most emotional one,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So everybody had to break the news to me as though some tragic thing in real life had actually happened.”

The cast of Yellowjackets, which just wrapped its third season, is very close. So close that they throw death parties for one another when a character is killed off the show. The series is about teenagers stranded in the remote wilderness after a plane crash, and the depths they plunge in order to survive, both in the 1996 wilderness timeline and in present day, where Lynskey plays adult survivor Shauna (who was crowned the “Antler Queen” and leader of the group in the finale). Last season’s finale raised the stakes with the death of star Juliette Lewis‘ character, Adult Natalie, and now, deaths are aplenty.

“[With Nat’s death] Juliette, was like, ‘Okay, don’t cry,’” recalls Lynskey of receiving that dreaded call from her former co-star. “Then she was like, ‘It’s okay, you can cry,’ because of course, I immediately burst into tears. All of them, I was heartbroken.”

This season continued to trim the adult cast with the deaths of Lottie and Van, following Simone Kessell and Lauren Ambrose, respectively, joining the series in season two. Lynskey makes it clear that she trusts the mystery ride that showrunners Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson and Jonathan Lisco have set them on after a wild season that included the darkest turn for both her Shauna and her teenage version played by Sophie Nélisse. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t shedding tears. “The idea of never finishing [filming] a little earlier than we thought and making a dinner plan with Lauren and Simone? I’m just going to start crying!” she adds.

In the below conversation with THR, Lynskey shares her introspective take on Shauna’s evolution (including taking a bite out of Hilary Swank‘s arm), whether or not she thinks it’s fair that her remaining friends, Tai (Tawny Cypress) and Misty (Christina Ricci), are now coming for her, and what her voiceover ending means for the future of the show: “Honestly, none of us are safe.”

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In the beginning of this season, you said there were some things that really shocked you, and I’m curious what they were.

It got very, very wild. Some things were crazier than I thought. I was pretty shocked that I was taking a bite out of a living human being’s arm. Also Shauna just barreling ahead with 50 percent of the information is always so interesting to me; how certain she can become, and then when she finds something else out, she just switches to a different certainty. But yeah the wildness of that scene with Hilary [Swank] was the most surprising thing.

The Shaunas plural take the biggest turn this season. I always like to hear from you about what you ask of your showrunners at the beginning of the season. Going back to that conversation, how deep was your talk about Shauna’s arc?

They got into it a little bit. At the beginning of the season, they said, “She’s really going to try to do her best to be a good wife and a good mother. She wants to make an effort.” That sounded really interesting to me. I was like, “I’d like to see that.” I think she’s been wanting to, and it felt nice that she felt she could now trust [husband] Jeff [Warren Kole] and that they had gotten to this point. And then that didn’t last very long. They said things were going to get really crazy for her. The conversation was kind of vague. But they definitely said she was going to get unhinged and that it was going to get very, very dark, but I didn’t know the specifics. And that could be anything. It’s not like things haven’t been dark before!

And they did not tell me about any of the deaths that were happening. I had to hear it from the people who were dying.

Oh, wow.

So, that was sad. But they went into quite a bit of detail about how she thought someone was stalking her, and she sees this phone in the bathroom and she gets a tape. They said, “and then we find out the answer of who’s doing it,” but they didn’t tell me what the answer was. So I think there were some things that were still being decided.

Things have changed a bit since season one when there was a clear plan for the entire season and they went over everything in great detail before the season began. I don’t ask as many questions now. They have a system. They have a writers room. They’ll tell me when they’re ready to talk about it. ­I appreciate the pre-season debrief and I understand. Some things are still being figured out. Some people are still being cast. it’s a whole thing.

You mention your co-stars leaving. I spoke with Simone Kessell and Lauren Ambrose after Lottie and Van’s deaths. Simone was still digesting and Lauren had questions, but said she felt really good about where they ended up; I spoke with her and Liv Hewson together. I know you all are close, so what was it like when you found out? Juliette Lewis leaving the show was so big, now two more in your adult group are departing.

Everyone who died this season, and also Juliette, told me themselves. I think they all knew how I was going to respond because everybody knows each other so well, and they know I’m the most emotional one and that I get very, very attached to people. So everybody had to break the news to me as though some tragic thing in real life had actually happened.

[With Nat’s death in season two] Juliette, was like, “Okay, don’t cry.” Then she was like, “It’s okay, you can cry,” because of course, I immediately burst into tears. All of them, I was heartbroken. I was heartbroken when Alexa [Barajas] told me [she was Pit Girl]. I didn’t know that was happening to Alexa. She’s so good. She’s so talented. When everybody on the show is so good, you don’t want to lose any one of them. All of the characters are so interesting, and I’m not in the writers room but I’m like, “Oh, but there is so much more that they have to offer and so much more they have to offer in these particular characters.”

I don’t doubt that all of them are going to go on to have amazing careers and do whatever they want. Simone and I are actively working on something that we’ll act in together back in New Zealand, and we’re so excited about that. And at the same time, you just have to trust. These people [our showrunners] are brilliant. I have signed on to go on the ride that these writers have decided to put us on, and I trust them. I think they’re telling the story they feel is best to tell. They’ve given me so much amazing material to work with. They’ve given all of us amazing material to work with. That’s why the characters are so great and why people care so much. But just personally, the idea of never finishing [filming] a little earlier than we thought and making a dinner plan with Lauren and Simone? I’m just going to start crying!

It raises the stakes because we feel like none of you are safe, and the final moments of the season turn on you. But I’m thinking, there’s no way they’ll kill off Melanie Lynskey now, right? Do you ever have that thought?

Honestly, none of us are safe. Really, truly. None of us feel like, “Oh, we’re going to be fine, we’re good until the end.” I really don’t know. They could want to do something really surprising in season four, and then I don’t have a job anymore. So we’re all just kind of bracing ourselves because we don’t really know. Somebody heard that they take people for brunch to tell them that they’re getting killed off, which I don’t think is true. (Laughs)

Everyone who I spoke to told me that they got a phone call.

Someone in my Instagram commented like, “Don’t go to brunch!”

With all of these season three deaths, I’ve gotten to speak with the people who have departed. Lauren Ambrose candidly spoke about putting in the work to find the truth in some of her scenes. With her death scene, she said she cleared the room out so she and Hilary Swank [who plays Adult Melissa] could accomplish what they did. Were there any Shauna scenes that you felt similarly about, where you needed to dig in or figure out with a scene partner how to find an emotional truth?

Yes. And by the way, I really appreciate working on a show with people who take the time to do that. Lauren worked on that and made it make sense, and that ending episode of hers is so beautiful. It was so gorgeous and she made sure that everything was in alignment emotionally; she made it so powerful. I couldn’t be there on her last day. I was so sad. I sent her a grilled cheese truck. I knew she was doing really horrible stuff and I was like, she probably feels like comfort food. But I wish I could have been there.

The throughline that Sophie [Nélisse] and I have always been really interested in with Shauna is this deep belief in who she is that she’s not really showing the world. Before we started filming the show, she and I sat down and were like: She has a lot of confidence. There’s no part of her that’s like, “I’m just a shy wallflower and, what if boys aren’t interested in me?” She’s like, “I can get whoever I want. I’m very dangerous.” I was so happy that this 21-year-old gorgeous child was on the same page as me about this feral person we’re playing. (Laughs) This quiet best friend thing she was doing was not where Shauna was comfortable as a teenager. And this housewife thing she’s doing in her middle age is also not where she’s comfortable. It’s just where she feels she’s going to go undetected and like she’s not going to get into trouble. She feels like if she owns her own power, that’s going to be dangerous.

Sophie and I have always played her with this kind of undercurrent where she does get quite excited by things that are very, very risky. So when things happen that seem like, “Where did that come from?” (laughs) — like suddenly she’s outside a stranger’s house with a knife — it’s following that thrill; she gets a high from feeling like the stakes are very high. Her instincts are all over the place, but she will protect herself and protect her family. I know there are some people who think she doesn’t care about her family. I think she deeply loves her family. I think she wants to protect them. But for me, it does make sense that anything will set her off. Then once she starts to feel that old feeling of the hunt and being in danger in that really primal way, she comes alive. So it does make biting a chunk out of Hillary Swank’s arm makes sense. I don’t know if she would have killed the daughter of the researcher, but she was ready to confront her with a knife.

Hearing you say that, it’s dawning on me how surprising it was that Shauna was being hunted at the end of season two, especially now after seeing her as the season three wilderness Antler Queen. She’s the hunter, I can’t imagine anyone hunting her.

I know. But now, after seeing how this season has gone, I look back on that moment of the [season two finale] hunt and it’s really interesting. Because obviously, she wanted to participate in the hunt as a ruse to get Lottie to an institution. Like, “Okay, if this is what’s going to do it, fine,” and then they all sort of switched back on and got a little crazy about it, and she was trying to be voice of reason. But seeing this season, I wonder if there was some element of them all being like, “Now we’re in control.” Like, “You stopped us from leaving. You were in charge of us and nobody knew what you were going to do, and you were so unpredictable. And now here we are and we have the chance to actually take you down.” I wonder if some old instinct kicked in for them.

That’s so true because after this season, I’m wondering why they go near you in the present day. I’m sorry! But I would think they would be traumatized.

I mean, they bonded! There must be some [changing of the dynamics in the rescue timeline] and I do think that people have compassion for what Shauna has gone through. Also, nobody’s behaving perfectly, like Lottie [Courtney Eaton] split a man’s head open and then started eating his brains. I feel like we forget that!

Yes, that’s a great point! (Laughs)

I think Shauna is a traumatized kid who’s not doing her best. You certainly can’t say she’s doing her best, but she’s just kind of going with this feral thing that’s overtaken her.

In this final scene when you journal, Shauna’s family has left her, at least for now, so she is free of that mother-wife burden. She’s finding herself again. What she says is some of the most insight we’ve gotten on this show: “I was a warrior, a fucking queen and I’m not going to let that slip away anymore.” What does that mean for her now?

Does it still say, “I was a nightmare?”

No.

I recorded a version where I said, “I was a warrior. I was a nightmare.” I liked that. I thought that was really interesting that she knew that.

Maybe that’s why they cut it.

Well that was my intent, because I liked that. This is why I really hope that we get season four and hopefully season five, because there’s so much still to uncover. Like you just said, the journey from what her position is now within the group to being a person who… you know, they weren’t hanging out in the adult timeline, but certainly Tai seemed to love and care about her. Natalie, not so much.

Which we now understand.

Yeah, of course. I do wish I was getting to play some of that stuff with Juliette. That’d be so much fun to watch. Like Lauren [Ambrose] and I both said one day, it’s basically religious watching her work, watching what Juliette does.

I did ask the showrunners if we would ever see a ghost Natalie, and they said not in season three but that the door is certainly open.

Listen, I would take ghost Natalie. I would love to have her come and be ghost Natalie. I want all of them to be ghosts. I’m having a hard time letting go. But to me, whenever I have had these moments as Shauna where she does get to be kind of unhinged and she does get to show rage, there’s this incredible calmness that comes over my body. The rest of the time when I’m playing her, there’s a little bit of an itchy feeling. There’s sort of a twitchy thing. She’s easily distracted. She doesn’t finish sentences. There’s something that feels very calming when I have a big moment of something that comes from a really rageful place. I do love how, by the end of the season, Teen Shauna and Adult Shauna have aligned in this way. I’m very interested to see a Shauna who’s just embracing it like, “You know what? This is where my power is. I’m not a great mom, sorry I tried!”

You did try your best.

I agree, I do think she did try her best. She loves Callie. Callie’s not the easiest. Shauna’s not the easiest. It just is what it is.

The reveal that Callie [Shauna’s daughter] killed Lottie is big for your character as well. Callie (Sarah Desjardins) snapped when she reacted to what Lottie (Kessell) was saying, which resulted in her pushing Lottie down the stairs to her death. Did you recognize a mother-daughter bond in that scene? How do you interpret what happened there?

I was really impressed with that scene and how Sarah played it. I think Sarah’s so wonderful and Simone is so wonderful, and seeing the two of them together… again, I’m like, why can’t there be more of that? I loved that. It’s such an interesting dynamic. But I really loved how Sarah played that. There was so much power there and it was very deliberate. I liked that she didn’t hedge around it or do a “what am I doing?” kind of face. She really made a choice, and I loved it. I was like, “Oooh!”

I don’t know how Shauna would feel about it. She obviously has complicated feelings about Lottie. She doesn’t want Callie to be a murderer. She wants Callie to be safe and make good choices, or what she considers to be good choices, I guess! But I thought that moment was pretty amazing.

I thought the heart necklace was a marking for being sacrificed to the wilderness, but Lottie had told Shauna it wasn’t. Before her death, Lottie wanted to put Callie on a pedestal, not hurt her, but Callie seemed to feel threatened in the moment.

I think that’s why Lottie says, “It’s never meant what you thought it meant” [to Shauna about the necklace]. During that scene with the three of them in the kitchen [in an earlier episode], that was an absolute triggered fear response [when Shauna pulled the necklace off Callie and kicked Lottie out of her house]. Simone and I have both talked about that scene. I think sometimes the episodes are so long and they have to try to fit as much in as possible, so it got trimmed down a little bit. I still think it’s a great scene. Sarah’s so great. But there was something electric that happened between Simone and I. I hope it came across because it felt very, very powerful. She and I are so bonded that we were able to transmit something between us. But yeah, I don’t think Lottie meant to mark Callie for death. I think it seems as though she had some recognition of the part that Callie was going to play.

Lottie says Callie is the child they got back out of the wilderness. That they lost Shauna’s baby for her, and it connects to a vision that Lottie had seen earlier in the series, which we now know was about her death. Have you imagined if Shauna’s family will come back? By Jeff’s (Warren Kole) text message, it doesn’t seem permanent.

I would be scared if they weren’t series regulars! Sarah is so amazing. I’ve loved, loved, loved working with Sarah. And something so special happens when Warren and I work together. He’s been one of the greatest seen partners I’ve ever had. There was more stuff of Van and Tai and Jeff and Shauna at Natalie’s funeral. Lauren and Tawny were like, “He is so fun. You get to do this all the time?” I was like, “I know. I’m the luckiest person on earth.” He’s so up for anything. His instincts are so great. His improv is really great. I cannot think of a world where I don’t have scenes with Warren.

I remember you shared photos from that scene on Instagram, but said you had to redo your post because of a spoiler. Was there more from Nat’s funeral scene that got cut?

Oh, the art department made this beautiful little card for Natalie’s funeral. It was this painting of Juliette holding these lilies, on this Catholic-style card. It was so beautiful and special, and I also thought Juliette would have really loved it. And then I got told off by all these people [that it was a spoiler].

The spoiler window closes after two years!

I try to be so careful. I posted a picture of my face covered with blood [from this season] and someone called that a spoiler.

This other final scene between Tai (Tawny Cypress) and Misty (Christina Ricci) where they are plotting your demise, Tai makes some accusations about you being behind every death and fueling everything that happened out in the wilderness. When you read that, did you think that was a fair characterization?

I was like, “Oh my god, Taissa’s like a Reddit commenter!” I don’t read it very often, but whenever I do, that’s what it feels like. (Laughs)

And Tai was your girl. It’s harsh.

I know. Obviously, I don’t agree with that because I’m playing this person and I see the nuance. But oh, I love an angry Tawny. That’s exciting. Let her be ferocious, let her be scary. The scenes where she went to bury Van and then got back in the car with me. The feeling that was coming from her shut me down. It was so scary. She’s a magnificent actress. Christina is obviously so fucking good and if the two of them are banding together to go after me, that’s delicious. That’s so exciting.

It is, but I’m also wondering, is there any world where all three of you could survive that?

I mean, I’m not feeling hopeful after this season! This season was a real rough one, just heartbreak after heartbreak. So probably one of us is going to die — or all of us, and season five is a whole new adult cast!

Melissa (Swank) is also still out there. Now that Shauna’s friends are turning on her, could you see any world where she would seek Melissa out? And would you hope to see Hillary Swank return?

Gosh, I hope Melissa goes to the emergency room. You can really get infected! I don’t know how Shauna and Melissa would be a team. That was a pretty ferocious fight. I also think Shauna’s pretty loyal to Tai. I like to believe in that. She can be very defensive, very, “well, I was only trying to…” But with Tai [in the car after Van’s death], I think Shauna really was trying to say sorry, to the best of her abilities. I think Shauna hurting Tai is very, very difficult for her. So it’s hard because I want to see ferocious, unhinged Tawny Cypress, but I also want Shauna and Tai to be friends forever.

About taking that bite of Hilary’s arm, I know your director Ben Semanoff had many conversations about what to make the skin out of and how you guys should chew it. (Swank said the skin was made of silicone.) Were you part of that brainstorming?

No, I’m not involved in anything like that. But our makeup team is so amazing and I know they had to create something that was food-based for the blood because Hillary has sensitivities. So they made this incredible thing [for her arm] that looked so real and I was nervous. I was really nervous that I was accidentally going to hurt her or take a bite that was not quite in the right spot of the prosthetic, which was glued onto her arm.

She was really up for it, which I appreciated. I just had to keep reminding myself that she was not just in Million Dollar Baby, she has an Oscar for Million Dollar Baby. I worked with Clint Eastwood [in Flags of Our Fathers]. I know you get one take. To give that performance in that movie, which was so incredible, she had to be ready to go at all times. She had to be prepared that she might get punched in the face. There’s not a lot of seeing what works. So I just kept that in mind the whole time: this is a person who is ready for anything. And she really was. She was not precious at all. She was on the floor. She was great.

In defense of Shauna, in the finale we do see Teen Melissa (Jenna Burgess) on top of Shauna (Nélisse) and nearly killing her in the wilderness. Do you think Shauna was triggered by their past?

I think she’s just so carried away, she’s so alive in that moment. I think she’s just so excited. She was triggered in that moment with Lottie when the necklace is on Callie, but then there’s something else happening with Melissa. I think it’s a little bit sexual? Anya [Adams, director of the eighth episode] and I talked about that. She said, “When you lean over to take a bite, I want it to almost look like you’re going to kiss her.” And I was like, “Oh I like the feeling of it being so exciting for her that it’s almost a sexual thing.”

It does seem like she’s probably been having boring sex for a lot of years.

Poor Jeff. Well, there was Adam [Peter Gadiot]!

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Yellowjackets season three is now streaming on Paramount+ With Showtime, with a linear airing Sunday at 8 p.m. on Showtime. Follow along with all of THR‘s season three coverage and finale interviews, including our interview with showrunners Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson and Jonathan Lisco, and Alexa Barajas on her Pit Girl reveal.