Melanie Lynskey: Husband Jason Ritter Would ‘Lose His Mind’ to Join ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2
Is there a “Yellowjackets” and “Candy” crossover in the cards?
Lead star of the Showtime thriller Melanie Lynskey recently teamed up with real-life husband Jason Ritter for the Hulu true-crime series “Candy,” with Ritter making a cameo appearance as a police officer. Now, Lynskey teased that Ritter would “would lose his mind” to work with her on “Yellowjackets.”
“He would do anything, I think. He really would,” Lynskey said during the For Your Consideration event for the show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery (via People). “I mean, I want them to cast whoever they want to cast. I’m not ever going to push my husband on them. But they should know he would do it in a second.”
Lynskey stars as Shauna, a plane crash survivor who lived in the wilderness for over a year and a half after her soccer team crash-landed in the woods back in 1996. The teen version of Shauna, played by Sophie Nélisse, also has a real-life overlap with Lynskey: Nélisse offered to babysit anytime for Lynskey and Ritter’s three-and-a-half year old daughter.
“We hung out a little bit and she was always offering to babysit, which is so cute. She was like, ‘If you need a babysitter…’ I just love her,” Lynskey gushed over Nélisse. “I think we all got really lucky with our younger counterparts. They’re all amazing.”
Lynskey added, “I just feel very fortunate because [Sophie] is just so talented. Every time I see the show, I’m just like, ‘Oh, that’s the building blocks of my performance. She’s doing the emotional heavy lifting. I think she’s a genius and she’s such a sweet person. She’s really fun. She’s really sweet.”
During IndieWire’s FYC brunch, Lynskey weighed in on the viral appeal of “Yellowjackets.”
“None of them were two-dimensional girls,” Lynskey said of the ensemble group of characters. “They were all really complex. And I hadn’t seen teenage girls written that way.”
Series co-creator Ashley Lyle similarly revealed that “Yellowjackets” was meant to redefine what it means to be a complicated lead character in the modern television landscape.
[“Co-creator Bart Nickerson and I] developed this script when working on ‘Narcos,’ and that was so steeped in machismo, I think we wanted to go in completely the opposite direction,” Lyle said. “We’ve gotten so good at showing complicated male characters who are despicable, your Don Drapers, your Walter Whites, but it’s still rare to see women in a similar light.”
