Jasmin Savoy Brown reveals how ‘Yellowjackets’ filming ‘traumatized’ the cast

I think we can all agree that the Yellowjackets season 2 finale was pretty crazy. There were deaths, meals, and all kinds of other uncomfortable things going on. There are obviously some spoilers incoming, so stop reading now if you don’t want to know what happened. At the end of the episode, the girls are almost burnt alive in the cabin, but that’s only part of the trauma they all went through. Jasmin Savoy Brown, who plays Taissa, recently revealed just how difficult filming was for everyone.

Speaking to EW, Brown revealed that while Taissa was the one who let them all out of the burning cabin, the whole cast was still “traumatized” by going through that and everything else.

“We’re all still tired and processing it and going, ‘What the [beep] did we just do for the last six months?'” she said. In an interview with Collider, she also talked about how important representation was to her during the filming of the show. She said she was happy that there were more scenes with her and Akilah over the course of the season.

“We’ve seen more scenes with Taissa and Akilah, and I’m definitely a part of that. Let’s be honest, if there’s two Black girls in a group and they’re the only two, they’re gonna stick together, especially in a survival scenario. And Nia [Sondaya] and I both believe that that’s happening a lot more off screen than we happen to see on screen. But I’ve been championing that from the beginning that we see that and so it’s nice that that got taken into account.”

There’s also the issue of that scene in the water with Van, when they’re both undressed. Brown said she felt like it was necessary for those two characters to appear like that, because it served the scene. If the nudity serves the scene, she said, then it’s a line she doesn’t mind crossing.

“I think at the beginning of my career, I would have done pretty much anything. I’ve been disrobed a few times on screen because it made sense to me, but now when I think about it, there was a scene or two early on where that wasn’t really necessary, and so now, I’m just not going to unless I think it furthers the story. Or, in the case of Yellowjackets, when Van and Tai are swimming in the lake or whatever, that wasn’t necessarily necessary to see these two people without their clothes, but I thought it was a beautiful kind of important moment for queer representation in the sense of, we’re seeing these straight couples having sexy scenes or being naked all the time. How often are we seeing two female characters in an interracial relationship — I just thought that was a beautiful image, and it showed the intimacy of the relationship.”

Filming the show was hard on everyone, especially with the surprise deaths and heart-wrenching decisions the survivors had to make. This makes the idea of belief in something greater, and spirituality as a whole, as something of an undercurrent of the show, whether it’s explicitly explored or not.

Brown said she’s not really sure that Taissa really believes any of Lottie supernatural stuff.

“I’m not convinced she believes, is the thing. I know people keep saying that, ‘Oh, well, when she says that Lottie cured her sleepwalking.’ I still think that she might think that was kind of a fluke. I’m not of the belief that Taissa fully believes. I’m just not.”

The full second season of Yellowjackets is now streaming. The finale airs Sunday on Showtime.