‘It was just really tough for me’: Kevin Alves speaks up on the break he had to take due to ‘Yellowjackets’ season 2 finale

There’s a scene in the Yellowjackets season two finale that’s pretty hard to watch. It involves two brothers and something that had to happen in order for the group to survive. There are some pretty big spoilers incoming, so stop reading if you don’t want to know what happened. Kevin Alves, who plays Travis, big brother to Javi (Luciano Leroux), recently spoke about what it was like to eat his fictional brother.

Alves told ET that when he first read the script for the scene where he has to consume his brother, he “had to take a break. … A solid 10-minute break.” He “couldn’t believe that’s what happened.”

“It was just really tough for me. And it’s kind of one of those things where I understood it from a story perspective, but just the idea of doing it was gonna be so difficult from an actor’s perspective because of how much I care about Luciano and how much I care about this character.”

I guess it’s not surprising that Alves had trouble eating his own brother, even if it is a fictional TV show. Alves said it was “heartbreaking” because of all the time they spent together building their characters.

“You know, at the end of the day, when you live with a character for two years, you become kind of close to them in some ways. So, I think that Travis to, one, be put in this position, and two, actually convince himself in this twisted way to go through with it was pretty much heartbreaking.” 

That’s not even the really hard part, he said. Actually sitting there and filming was even worse for him because it was the physical culmination of all of the preparation.

“It was just so heartbreaking, the idea of grabbing it and eating him. I don’t think there was a single take where I’m not crying as I take that first bite because it was just so hard and so difficult to do. It was really, really tough to shoot. It was really hard to deal with it all emotionally.”

What about the fact that Javi and Travis decided to save Natalie, and Javi died trying to do that? Does Travis have any guilt over that?

“Oh yeah, absolutely. I think there’s no question that the reason we see this conflicted Travis in the finale is not only because his brother died, but also he feels completely at fault for his death. His death is a direct reaction to his choice to save Natalie. There’s no denying that.”

Alves also revealed that the heart itself was made of gelatin and “kind of disgusting in many ways.” That probably didn’t help.

The complete Yellowjackets season two is now streaming. The finale airs on Sunday on Showtime.