<body><div>Picture Lord of the Flies Jersey style, with a local high school girls’ soccer team trying to survive a plane crash in the wilderness. Add some murders, serious frostbite and a little cannibalism, plus a ’90s soundtrack, and you’ve got a hit show.Bart Nickerson and Ashley Lyle are the husband-and-wife writing/producing duo who created the hit Showtime series Yellowjackets, serving as showrunners, writers and executive producers. Both are Jersey born and bred: Nickerson’s from Middletown, and Lyle grew up in Belmar. The show, which stars two New Jersey-raised actresses, Christina Ricci (Misty) and Tawny Cypress (Taissa), is partly set in the Garden State. It’s the dark, disturbing story of a high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness in 1996 that pivots to how they have recovered (and not recovered) from the tragedy as adults. It combines survival and horror with the girls’ coming-of-age stories. The fourth and final season premieres on November 20 on Paramount+.This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. <div style="position:relative;width:100%; height:0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zDFHivyECDU?feature=oembed" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" style="width:100%; height:100%;top:0; left:0; position:absolute"></iframe></div>New Jersey Monthly: I was going to say, ‘I’m calling from Jersey Monthly,’ because that’s what we were called in your show.Ashley Lyle: Absolutely. [laughs]We kind of got dissed when one of the characters says the magazine can’t compare to Italian Vogue. We got a kick out of that.Ashley: It was said with much love. And we had to give a shout-out to the Asbury Park Press in there, too—just all of our hometown media.Can both of you tell me a little about growing up in New Jersey and how it made you into the weirdos, as you’ve both called yourselves, who created this show?Ashley: I feel as though growing up in New Jersey is part of your identity in a way that, I have since learned, is maybe not true of every state and everybody who grew up in other places. I feel like being from Jersey is different than being from Oregon, for instance. It doesn’t seem to have the same sort of self-identifying properties.<h2>Or cachet!</h2>Ashley: Right. I think there’s this Jersey pride that—I don’t know if it’s just being in such close proximity to New York City—but I feel like Jersey has really forged its own path in terms of the people who grew up there. There’s a very specific New Jersey culture and way of being in the world. Even out here in L.A., we have a lot of friends from New Jersey; we have a whole New Jersey contingent. I think the sense of humor is different. Maybe it’s an East Coast thing, but we use a lot more sarcasm than I think Midwesterners and West Coast people do. And I say that in the best way. Growing up in New Jersey, you have a sort of pride in it that never leaves you.Bart Nickerson: I think, in part, it’s a kind of a pride that you have to develop, because I feel like New Jersey can be so quickly maligned outside of the state [laughs], especially by New Yorkers. In New Jersey, the communication styles are different, the sense of humor is different, and the meaning of sarcasm and the way of giving each other a hard time as a display of affection all has a very different tone and is received in a very different way than in other places. <blockquote>I feel like Jersey has really forged its own path in terms of the people who grew up there. There’s a very specific New Jersey culture and way of being in the world. —Ashley Lyle, Yellowjackets cocreator</blockquote><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3C9yYY_1Gnn597i00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3C9yYY_1Gnn597i00" width="2048" height="1536" ><figcaption>Christina Ricci plays Misty and Tawny Cypress plays Taissa in Yellowjackets ; both actresses grew up in New Jersey. Ricci: Courtesy of Victoria Will/Paramount+ with Showtime. Cypress: Courtesy of Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with&nbsp;Showtime</figcaption></figure>Why do you think New Jersey produces so many creative people, including great actors like Christina Ricci, who stars in your show? Ashley: I think that, at least for me, growing up in New Jersey in the ’90s, there was a really strong counterculture there. There was vintage vinyl and going to Maxwell’s and Hoboken. There were punk shows and hardcore shows in everyone’s backyards. It was very much present. I went to the Stone Pony to see my first concert when I was 13. I don’t know how my brother and I convinced our parents to let us go to the Stone Pony to see a show. I’m sure there are a lot of people who ended up in Jersey City and Hoboken because they couldn’t afford to stay in New York. But I don’t think it’s just that; I think there is just this embrace of weirdness and creativity, and this sort of anarchic spirit that New Jersey had when I was growing up there that was distinctly its own.Bart: I think there’s also the New York influence that you get in Jersey. There’s the right amount of tension and inspiration, and there’s enough boredom in New Jersey to force you into having to create or do something in a different way. Until you get your driver’s license in many parts of New Jersey, it’s just you and your friends, and there’s nothing to do, and you just kind of make it up as you go along. Ashley: Yeah, you may not be able to go to CBGBs, so you’re gonna have a punk show in the backyard or in the church basement, which was, like, a weirdly specific but frequent occurrence. I remember seeing a lot of punk bands in Elks Lodges and church basements. <h2>How did you two meet?</h2>Bart: I was living in Jersey City, and Ashley was living in New York.Ashley: We had some mutual friends from Red Bank and Improv Jam and NYU and high school that we met through. It was a big kind of cross-match of people we had known growing up. And somehow, we didn’t cross paths until we were in our early 20s.Bart: Shout-out to Improv Jam, where me and a bunch of my friends met and we actually did a reunion show recently—they’ve started doing shows again. They’re based in the Monmouth County area, and they were a Red Bank mainstay for years.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=04wA3t_1Gnn597i00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=04wA3t_1Gnn597i00" width="1024" height="1365" ><figcaption>Justin Bettman/Countour for Parmount+and Showtime</figcaption></figure>Since you both grew up in New Jersey, and the show is set in a fictional town and high school in the Garden State, I wondered if any of the characters were loosely based on people that you knew growing up here. Bart: For legal reasons, I’m gonna jump in and say no.Ashley: [Laughs] I’ll clarify my chuckle: None of the characters are based off people we knew, but we did kind of go in the vault of names. We wanted very specifically New Jersey names for our characters. So there are some people I went to middle school with whose names ended up in the show. They just felt so supremely New Jersey.Bart: It wasn’t a conscious thing, but growing up around people in New Jersey, there are gestures and ways of being that just naturally found their way into the show. And in that way, these characters are a sort of mash-up of yourself and the people you know. They do feel very much like familiar types and personalities to us. There are times where you can even hear syntaxes or subtle ways that characters speak that you don’t realize how specific they are to New Jersey until you see it. <h2>Did you film any of the show in New Jersey?</h2>Ashley: We did not, unfortunately. We film in Vancouver, and so it’s always an interesting challenge in production to try to sneak in as much New Jersey as we can. We’ve definitely had a lot of conversations with our location managers and our location scouts where we’re trying to explain the look of a New Jersey house, which does not necessarily exist in the same way in Vancouver. It’s definitely a challenge. And sometimes it’s more about getting in the references and the flavor, because we don’t have the ability to send a unit out to New Jersey.Bart: It was fun to learn that the concrete dividers on the highways are called Jersey barriers. That just that came up in a production meeting because we needed concrete dividers. And somebody said, ‘You mean Jersey barriers?’ And I was like, They’re not called Jersey barriers, are they?!<h2>And you were like, Jersey pride!</h2>Bart: Right! <blockquote>When you can add a sense of place to something, it just makes the tapestry feel fuller and more real. [A New Jersey story] seemed like a slam dunk to us.—Bart Nickerson, Yellowjackets cocreator</blockquote><h2>What made you want to set the show in New Jersey?</h2>Ashley: It didn’t feel like there were any other options to us, since we’re both born and bred in New Jersey, and we wanted to do a show that delves into growing up in the ’90s. It just felt like the only choice. Bart: I think when you can add a sense of place to something, it just makes the tapestry feel fuller and more real. It’s where we were at in the ’90s, when we were around the age of the characters, and it seemed like a slam dunk to us.Having our magazine, some local newspapers, Rutgers, etc., mentioned on-screen, it seems as if you wanted to have these recognizable Jersey institutions in the show.Ashley: Absolutely. I don’t know if you picked up on this one, but we have the recurring hotel that’s called the Jolly Hitcher, which is our version of the Molly Pitcher Inn in Red Bank. We definitely spent some time at the Molly. I went to several bat mitzvahs at the Molly Pitcher when I was 13, so that felt natural. Our production designer has seen lots of pictures of it and she knows what the vibe is. And last season, she even had Jolly Hitcher bath towels and robes made for set. And I got some of them after we wrapped, so now I wear my Jolly Hitcher robe with pride!I love that. And you have both Christina Ricci and Tawny Cypress, two New Jersey-raised actresses starring in the show. Did you want them because they were from New Jersey, or were they just a good fit because they understood the vibe of the show?Bart: I was going to say it’s a coincidence, but I think it was partly their ability to have the right vibe and also, we had a shared connection to New Jersey. It’s a weird thing that even in L.A., you meet people from New Jersey, and it just makes sense. There are all these things that we were talking about before that maybe don’t translate from the East Coast to the West Coast. For instance, there’s maybe a tendency towards being confrontational that you can fall into easily with somebody from New Jersey. <h2>And the accent. </h2>Ashley: Yeah, if I get a couple of drinks in me, it comes out a lot more. It’s always a little bit of a tell when I get excited or angry, because there’s a slightly different syntax that just starts to ramp up because you get a little excited, and it just, like, starts to come out of you a little. I really, really love the accent, but it’s funny—both Bart and I still have family in New Jersey, so we’ll go back to visit, and when I do, there are moments—you know, I’ll go to Starbucks and I’m like, Did everyone always sound like this? [laughs]I wrote a story a couple about some guys from Montclair who opened a Jersey-style sandwich shop in L.A. Do you know it? It’s called Ggiata Delicatessen. Ashley: Oh my God—I eat there all the time! Are you kidding me? Shout-out to the Burr. It’s my favorite sandwich. It’s their tuna sandwich, but they put capers and peppers and pickles on it, and it’s so good. Getting back to the Garden State—New Jersey sometimes gets a bad rap in movies, etc. Do you think your show changes that perception of New Jersey at all?Ashley: I’m not sure our show is super aspirational. [laughs]Bart: We’re making it worse.Ashley: True, true. [laughs] I think our next show has to make amends for what we’re doing now. But I think even setting it in New Jersey gives it this kind of cool, underdog type of cachet.Ashley: I hope so. I think New Jersey is deeply misunderstood by anyone who hasn’t been there, or worse, people who’ve only flown into Newark. My parents still spend time in Belmar, and my mom loves to take pictures of sunsets there. And so she is constantly sending me sunset pictures, and I’ll show them to people, and they’re like, Holy cow, that’s so beautiful. That’s in New Jersey? I’m like, Yes, that’s in New Jersey. Whatcha talking about? What do you think New Jersey is like? There are beautiful wooded areas, there are really quaint towns, there are vibrant, artsy cities. Asbury Park has turned into something truly spectacular in terms of art and food and culture. People don’t know if they haven’t spent time in New Jersey, but when they do, they’re like, Wait a second, this is a lot nicer than I thought.Yeah, that’s true. My kids are obsessed with New Jersey. They’re always saying, ‘Don’t talk bad about New Jersey!’Ashley: Funny. I love it. You’ve trained them well.<h2>What made you want to center the story on a girls’ soccer team? </h2>Ashley: We knew we wanted it to be about teenagers, and we knew we wanted it to be about women—and the idea of a sports team made so much sense. It was a little bit of a nod to the Uruguayan rugby team and what happened in the Andes. [Passengers were stranded for 72 days in the 1972 plane crash, and only 16 of the 45 people aboard Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 survived.] But also, we liked the idea of taking a group of teenage girls who have been training as a group to operate as a team and to put them in these extreme circumstances and see how that sense of teamwork both kind of strengthened and started to erode and fall apart and unravel.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3x58TY_1Gnn597i00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3x58TY_1Gnn597i00" width="2048" height="1365" ><figcaption>Courtesy of Eric Milner/Paramount+</figcaption></figure><h2>I guess I have to ask: Why did you go the cannibalism route?</h2>Ashley: Because we could. [laughs]Bart: Yeah, we really felt like it was time that somebody stood up for cannibalism! [both laugh] Seriously, in terms of the story, we very quickly realized that we wanted to kind of restore the characters to their factory setting and get in touch with the deepest and most primal parts of them, both good and bad. We liked the idea of the wilderness and having them feel the most alive they ever felt. And there seemed to be something that was so perversely human and extreme about this idea of cannibalism. Like, the word itself is so evocative. I love it. When I first started watching your show, I thought it wasn’t for me, that it was too gory. And then I got totally sucked in, and now I love it!Bart: That is the thing that we’re actually really proud of—we’ve heard from people who said they weren’t the biggest fans of horror, but they are willing to endure it for the characters and the story. And then people say the show gives them crazy dreams—and those are the two best compliments we’ve received.How do your friends and family back home in New Jersey feel about the show and your success? What have they told you about it? Ashley: They could not be more proud; it’s very sweet. My mom proselytizes the show to everyone. She even got her entire mah-jongg group watching it! My parents are not horror watchers, but they watch every episode and they tell their friends about it. It just makes me emotional to talk about how sweet it is and how proud they are.Bart: Same. My parents have always been very supportive, and they know the long road it can be in this industry. When we moved out, we were walking dogs and tending bar and having meetings that didn’t go anywhere. I think they’re just happy that the show has done well.This is the last season of the show. Is there anything in particular that fans should look out for when it premieres?Ashley: It’s the final season, so we are going to completely blow it out! [laughs]Bart: Yes, even more!</div></body>

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Picture Lord of the Flies Jersey style, with a local high school girls’ soccer team trying to survive a plane crash in the wilderness. Add some murders, serious frostbite and a little cannibalism, plus a ’90s soundtrack, and you’ve got a hit show. Bart Nickerson and Ashley...

Yellowjackets Creators Sneak As Much Jersey Into Their Hit Series As They Can

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Picture Lord of the Flies Jersey style, with a local high school girls’ soccer team trying to survive a plane crash in the wilderness. Add some murders, se

Yellowjackets Creators Sneak As Much Jersey Into Their Hit Series As They Can

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