Showtime’s Yellowjackets has featured everything from plane crashes to cannibalism to a main character putting makeup on her dead best friend’s corpse. So how did the show raise the bar at the start of its third season?
With fun, of course. Although plenty happens in season three of Yellowjackets (trust me, I’ve seen all the screeners), catching up with its forest-dwelling young protagonists as they play games, roughhouse, and otherwise find ways to enjoy themselves—even in their terrifying surroundings—feels like a sorely needed vibe shift after two seasons’ worth of carnage.
That being said, the carnage of Yellowjackets is also what makes the show so great; in a society that still expects young women to be quiet, pretty, and polite, watching a stranded soccer team bring the same intensity to simply surviving that they did to becoming state champions pre-crash feels genuinely invigorating. Still, season three excels partly because of its ability to portray small, quiet moments of unexpected joy and even peace alongside the teen-girl bitchiness and occasional brutality we’ve grown accustomed to over the past two seasons.
Liv Hewson’s, Jasmin Savoy Brown’s, and Sophie Thatcher’s characters—Van, Taissa, and Natalie, respectively—are all in very different places at the start of season three: Van and Taissa are falling more deeply in love, while Nat continues to struggle with the grief and anger that chased her even before the crash. But it’s clear from observing the actors’ chemistry in person that they couldn’t be more aligned. Here Vogue speaks to the trio about reprising their roles for a third season, reveling in the lighter moments, collaborating with the actors who play their characters’ grown-up incarnations, and much more.
Vogue: How does it feel to officially have season three out in the world?
Sophie Thatcher: It’s a trip! I mean, it was a long stretch in between two and three, and we know that there’s been a lot of anticipation for it, so it’s kind of surreal to have it out in the world. But it’s cool. It’s definitely a relief. I’m really excited. I feel like later in the season, it gets pretty bonkers, so I’m excited for people to see that. That’s all I’m going to say.
Jasmin Savoy Brown: I second that. It’s very exciting, and I’m curious to see how people are going to react to the tonal shift, because the girls are in a very different place emotionally and physically.
You each have such specific and strong roles this season. How does it feel when you do stuff one-on-one? Or do you prefer the ensemble scenes?
Thatcher: All I know is that shooting the group scenes is a pain the ass. It takes a really long time, but it’s exciting. You get to learn a lot from other actors. We’re lucky because it’s such a talented crew, but yeah, I know that I really miss the first season, when it was just one-on-one scenes. Life was easier and simpler back then. [Laughs.] We had a lot more of those in season one.
Brown: It’s nice in one-on-one scenes because you really just get to sink your teeth into it and explore a moment with someone for longer. And I think we all long for more of those, except for Liv.
Liv Hewson: Yeah, I’m a real sucker for the group scenes because it’s like being in a play and spending hours and hours living in the same moment. There’s something quite lovely about that for me because you get to find all the different possible ways to do it. Maybe there’s a nostalgic piece of it, too, because in season one so much of building Van for me was finding stuff to do in the back of group scenes. So I do still get a kick out of doing that. And it’s a really unique situation to be in a group [of this many actors] who are all roughly around the same age. It’s like being in a theater troupe or something.
Liv and Jasmin, I’d love to know anything you can tell me about working with the actors playing the older versions of your characters. Was it a pretty collaborative process?
Hewson: Well, you and Tawny [Cypress, the actor playing adult Taissa] have had a longer process together.
Brown: We have, but I think that [our process] has been less collaborative. Wait, that sounds like we don’t get along when we are really good friends! I just think that Tawny and I approach it from more of an intuitive place, where it feels like you and Lauren [Ambrose, the actor playing adult Van] approach it from more of a cerebral place, in terms of being on the same page. Tawny and I did a bit of work together in season one, but we realized we’re just so in tune that we don’t really need to talk about it much. Still, I learned so much from watching the choices she makes in her version of Tai that that’s made me a much better actress. The perfect example is the first two episodes of this season—getting to read the scripts and imagine the choices she would make, and then watching the episodes. She’s so good, and I think that she makes our Taissa so much better because she’s just such a smart actress. So thank God for me she’s playing her half the time.
Hewson: I love Lauren, and I love working with Lauren. Sharing this character with her is such a gift, and it’s so special to me, and I learned so much from watching her work and talking to her. We talked a lot this season. In particular, we spent a lot of time talking about Van and about the show and where things were headed. That was a really important piece of moving through this season for me—just connecting with her and talking to her about Van’s journey. We are similar in that we’re both quite referential; I think Lauren and I both like thinking about plays we’ve read or pieces of writing or other films, which I guess is very Van, actually, to sort of use references to link themes or character moments together. The two of us will just, like, spin out talking about, I don’t know, “Oh, this poem is relevant, actually,” or, “Oh, this movie actually reminds me of what we’re doing here.” It just feels like we’re on the same wavelength in this really lovely way. We’re being acting nerds together, I suppose.
Sophie, did knowing Nat’s fate this season change your portrayal of her in any way?
Thatcher: Not really, because I think the way that Juliette [Lewis’s] version died was so kind of random that it didn’t feel too informative. But then also, she had tried so many times to end her life, so there was that kind of strangeness to it all. But I tried not to think about it too much because it makes me really emotional. I was feeling a bit self-conscious [about] how Natalie was going to stand with just my version, if it’s going to read the same. But then there was also a sense of freedom because there wasn’t the constant back-and-forth. I wanted to nail her voice so bad. The first season I did it and got great feedback, but there’s also a way in which getting great feedback can be a curse because then you get in your head. But this season I just went in being like, This is innate. It’s in me. Watching it now I felt a little empty because Juliette is just such a incredible, electrifying onscreen presence and I never thought I could match that.
What were your favorite moments to act from the season’s first few episodes?
Thatcher: I loved the trial scene. I think Jennifer Morrison is a brilliant director, and it’s rare to get directors that come from an acting standpoint. I think she’s really smart with how she talks to actors because she’s been there, and it’s so cool seeing how she flips her dialogue a bit per actor because it’s all psychology-based. As a director you have to talk to actors in a way that they understand, and each actor is so different. She was just so smart with that and did such a great job doing that episode. I’m a huge fan of her.
Brown: I really liked the establishing of the village—like, filming all of the little pieces that the audience sees that establishes the Yellowjackets in this new community that they’ve built—because that was also us as performers physically getting to know the space. You know, it’s fun to play the girls when they’re happy because that doesn’t happen often. [Laughs.] So it was cool to be dressed up and be in character, but also be relaxed and laughing and safe. I got a kick out of that. It felt like a trick. When we’d be having a nice time on set and it was, like, light and easy, we’d be like, “Are we bad actors? This doesn’t feel hard.”
I’d love to know which Yellowjackets character you most identify with, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.
Thatcher: I’m going to say Natalie. I feel very much like my character, only not as dark, thank God.
Hewson: Yeah, I’m the same. I feel scared going any other way, yeah? Like, I feel such a deep identification with Van. She’s a real person to me. I’ve joked before that it’s like she’s a friend of mine, but there are a lot of commonalities there.
Brown: Walter’s love for musicals really hits me right in the chest. It might be Walter for me.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
