Yellowjackets is a tale of survival, and not just because it’s about a group of high school soccer players who must do their gruesome best to stay alive after their plane crashes in the wilderness. The show’s present-day story line follows those same women 25 years later, and on a meta level, it tells a very different survival story—that of its accomplished core team of actors, who have made it through the Hollywood wilderness.
Lauren Ambrose, Tawny Cypress, Simone Kessell, Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey, and Christina Ricci, who portray the grown-up versions of the characters (Van, Taissa, Lottie, Natalie, Shauna, and Misty, respectively) have all worked in the entertainment industry for decades, and have defied bleak Hollywood odds to remain in front of the camera even in their mid-to-late 40s. For Kessell, a New Zealander who’s hopped back and forth between continents for screen roles since the ’90s, mainstream recognition has been more recent, with her casting in Showtime’s smash hit Yellowjackets as well as the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi and a recurring role on Our Flag Means Death. But she’s been here all along, on shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
“I really feel like I’ve come into my own as an actress after working for 30 years,” Kessell tells Vanity Fair. “You know, I’m not new here.”
“I’ve been one of the ones holding up those lead actresses for so long,” she adds. Now she’s one of them, playing mysterious Lottie, who has grown from the teenage antler queen played by Courtney Eaton in Yellowjackets’ earlier timeline to the charismatic leader of an “intentional community” (read: possible cult) whom Kessell warns is “not all kaftans and sunshine.”
Kessell first came to Hollywood in the ’90s at the urging of Heath Ledger, an ex-boyfriend of hers, as part of “a group of Antipodean actors,” hanging out with Ledger and Joel Edgerton, among others. Kessell’s mother is Maori and her father is of European descent, which limited her options in those days. “I wasn’t going for lead roles in shows. I was going for the smaller sidekick roles, being brown-skinned,” she says. “But I was still there, giving it a go.” Now 47 years old and still calling the southern hemisphere her home base, she’s gotten married and has two sons, ages 10 and 18. Working on Yellowjackets with her family halfway around the world, she says that she found a sort of sisterhood with her castmates, an understanding that only comes with time and experience.
“There were definitely days where we’re all sitting in the greenroom—Lauren, Christina, Juliette, Melanie, Tawny, and myself—and we’re like, Look at us,” she says. “We’ve all got the same dilemmas with our kids, like, ‘oh, my God, who’s at after-school pickup from school today,’ and Lauren’s like, ‘Oh, my God, tell me about your teenager because my teenager…’ It’s really great to be in a room full of smart women and women who have all got a story just like I have and who have all been hardworking actresses for such a long time.”
“We’re going from strength to strength to strength. There was no fear, there was no jealousy, there was no—because we’re through all of that,” she adds. “These are just strong, intelligent women who are working actresses. So that in itself was like, holy fuck.”
Season two of Yellowjackets introduces us to Kessell as the present-day Lottie and ramps up the intensity of Eaton’s younger portrayal. Kessell studied footage of charismatic and controversial leaders like Teal Swan while prepping for the role. Lottie claims to be helping her followers find their light, but she certainly hasn’t banished her own darkness. “They say some of the best psychiatrists are incredible with their patients, but at home behind closed doors, they’re a hot mess,” Kessell says. “I feel like that’s a slice of Lottie that we’re seeing and about to see.”
Kessell recalls a two-page monologue she delivers to a large group late in the season as Lottie (no spoilers here), and the feeling of knowing that she’d nailed it.
“In this moment it very much felt like doing theater. And I had a real moment,” she says. “I said, ‘Well done, darling, well done.’ And that was my little moment. Then, okay, on to the next. I think that’s it, and when you stop acknowledging those little moments, it’s time to let it go, maybe.”
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