Yellowjackets Star Melanie Lynskey Teases Preparation for Season 2

Since its debut late last year, Yellowjackets has quickly become somewhat of a pop culture phenomenon, garnering countless fan theories, as well as an ever-growing number of accolades. That included several nominations for this year’s Emmy Awards, including Best Drama Series and Best Actress in a Drama Series for Melanie Lynskey, all of which add an extra layer of hype to the show’s upcoming sophomore season. In a recent interview with ET in celebration of her Emmy nomination, Lynskey teased how she is preparing for Season 2, and revealed that she would ideally like to pick the brain of the series’ creators before fully starting work on the new episodes.

“I would like to,” Lynskey revealed. “I want to do it when they’re ready. I don’t wanna push anybody. I can’t imagine the pressure that’s on them. Like, imagine writing the show and having it get the response it has gotten and then having to write another season. What a nightmare. I would be so stressed out. So, I think the last thing they need is some actor who’s like, ‘Guys, what’s happening?’ I just want them to have some breathing room.

“You know, the good thing about the show is it felt like it was within me from the moment I read the pilot. It felt like I knew her,” Lynskey said of Shauna. “And then, I think over the course of the season I really built this character with Sophie Nélisse, who plays young Shauna, and I was so inspired by her and her performance and what she was bringing to it. And so, that’s the main thing I wanna do when we get back to Vancouver is sit down with Sophie after we’ve read the first script and have a talk and just, you know, do it the way we’ve been doing it ’cause I felt like it worked.”

Yellowjackets begins in 1996, as a team of New Jersey high school soccer players travels to Seattle for a national tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes deep in the wilderness and the remaining team members are left to survive for nineteen months. The series chronicles their attempts to survive while also tracking their current lives in 2021. The series stars Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Ella Purnell, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Sammi Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis.

“Honestly, in season 1, every scene that I got I would be like, “Oh fun.” Like, I get to work with Juliette Lewis, I get to work with Tawny Cypress, I get to work with Christina Ricci, I get to work with Warren Kole and Sarah Desjardins, I get to work with Peter Gadiot,” Lynskey said of what excites her the most about Season 2. “Like, everyone was fun. I just loved that everyone was so different. People’s approaches are so different and it just was a very, very creatively fulfilling time. So, I just hope that I get to have scenes with all of them again. Well, not Peter because he died. RIP. But everybody else, I just love working with all these people. So, I’m just excited for all of it.”

Season 2 of Yellowjackets will debut on Showtime at a later date.