‘It’s often really heartbreaking’: The ‘Yellowjackets’ cast has a unique approach to those brutal character deaths and I’m officially creeped out

Watching Yellowjackets is scary and disturbing, to put it mildly. I’m a horror fan and even I have to cover my eyes at the cannibal stuff. According to the cast, they have some morbid fun while filming the series.

Ella Purnell, who played Jackie Taylor in Yellowjackets season 1, shared at Chicago’s Nov. 2024 Fan Expo that her co-stars handled her character’s demise in a way you might not have expected. According to Deadline, she said, “I just woke up one morning, and I had all these pictures from my Yellowjackets castmates of them taking selfies with my charred corpse.” What?!

That might be too gross for some actors, and I can’t help but shudder when hearing that. Then again, if you’re starring on a show whose big twist was the main characters eating people, you can handle it. Still, I’m thankful that’s not my line of work.

That’s not all, though. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ashley Lyle, the Showtime drama’s co-creator along with Bart Nickerson, said at Vulture Fest in mid-Nov. 2024 that the actors have a distinct way of marking character deaths. Lyle said, “I think it’s really lovely that the actors have started having funeral parties for each other.” She added, “It’s often really heartbreaking” when these fictional people have to die, but it’s a”good story.”

I’m a little creeped out by hosting funerals for fictional people but also amused by this idea. On the one hand, as Lyle said, it sounds like the actors have bonded with each other, and that’s all anyone can ever hope for when they work on a long-running TV series. On the other hand, can you imagine if a show like Game of Thrones had funerals for characters who didn’t make it? The actors would have no other social plans. The post-Red Wedding party would need to have involved a lot of booze.

As it turns out, there is alcohol at these eerie (but fun) gatherings, as Samantha Hanratty explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2023. She talked about a get-together the cast threw when Jane Widdop’s character Laura Lee passed away. Hanratty said, “It’s also just a celebration of like, you did an incredible job.

The opening scene of Yellowjackets sees the girls engaging in some cannibalistic practices (and teases the identity of the Antler Queen), so it’s no wonder the actors have figured out a way to deal with the many deaths. Sure, there have been a lot of thrillers about teenagers with a high death count, like Pretty Little Liars, but those shows skip the gore and keep the story fairly PG. Not Yellowjackets. From the pilot episode, which shows the soccer team on the plane that will lead them to their crash in the wilderness, it’s clear that even if the girls are saved, not all of them are going to make it out alive.

Nickerson and Lyle have talked about the various deaths in the series countless times, most notably that even in the present-day timeline, the characters who are now all grown up aren’t immune from fighting for survival. Lyle said, “the fact is that the stakes of the world are life and death.”

If you want to catch up on those character deaths and prepare for season 3, which will air in 2025, you can stream Yellowjackets in a few places. I can assume there will be more death parties during season 3!