Oh, to be a fly (yellowjacket) on this thread. Christina Ricci may not have a lot of screen time with some of her Yellowjackets costars, but they make up for it on their text chain.
“We don’t all get to work together very often. I’ve only spent one day working with Tawny [Cypress], two days working with Melanie [Lynskey]. Then most of my stuff last year was with Juliette [Lewis]. We hang out outside of set,” Ricci, 42, exclusively told Us Weekly. “We have an old lady text chain group and I commute back and forth to Vancouver, but whenever I do go into town, the ladies and I have dinner and I meet for a drink, and we talk all the time and see each other as much as we can.”
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The cast recently all reunited at the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards, with the Showtime series earning seven nominations. The psychological thriller centers on four women bonded by a 1996 plane crash that stranded their high school soccer team in the Canada wilderness for 19 months. Ricci plays adult Misty, the always outcast of the group — who, well, is unpredictable and what most may describe as a sociopath.
“Misty is really fun and playing her is fun because it is really enjoyable for me to play characters that are not bound by the sort of normal societal constraints or any kind of moralistic boundaries. She very much has her own morality and that’s fun and it’s fun to play characters also that don’t express their emotions in traditional ways,” Ricci told Us. “As an actor, I’m just always looking to do something new and different and something I haven’t necessarily seen before. So the sort of freedom I get with Misty is pretty incredible. And then also it really was wonderful to be nominated for an Emmy. So that was great.”
Ricci, who was nominated in the outstanding supporting actress category for her work, sprinkled in a few extra details about Misty in season 1 that wasn’t initially in the script. Example one: Misty must have a bird.
“With TV, there’s constant new scripts and constantly your character is changing, doing things maybe you didn’t expect. So I do contribute little ideas to her. But then there’s lots of stuff that is not my input that the characters made up of well, but like the bird, I didn’t even remember that I suggested the bird,” she said with a laugh. “But I think we were just talking about different types of people and at that time I was like, you know, people who keep birds. Because I didn’t really know much about birds at that time and I always thought it was strange. But now I’ve gotten to know the bird who plays Caligula and I totally understand why people have [them]. They’re very affectionate.”
Example two: Misty’s drink of choice. “The chocolate martini that she orders was my suggestion,” she added. “Little things like that along the way.”
For Ricci, the hit show has given her more opportunities to be creative. “It’s really different with television because it’s not the same as with film where basically a character’s written and then the character’s kind of handed over to you as the actor. You kind of get to create whoever you really want within the parameters of the writing,” Ricci explained. “What I’m looking at is — is the character something I haven’t seen before? Will I be getting to grow as an actor? I just always want to do things that I feel are original and unexplored in some way. I mean, obviously, almost every aspect of human nature has been explored at this point by art, but you know, there are tiny little differences that can be made to make something new.”
‘Yellowjackets’ Cast Shine at the Emmys
She continued: “I like doing TV because you kind of get to spend a longer time with the character, and if you do like the character, then that’s fantastic and great. … I’m right now growing and learning and changing and developing new muscles. And I do like that about TV that even at my age when I’ve been doing this for 35 years, it’s forcing me to grow and develop new skills.”
Yellowjackets season 2 is expected to premiere in early 2023.
