This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.
After an incredibly shocking fate awaited Simone Kessell’s Lottie Matthews in Yellowjackets season 3, the star and showrunner Jonathan Lisco breaks down how the twist marks a major turning point. The Showtime and Paramount+ thriller series focuses on both the survival of a high school football team lost in the Canadian wilderness in 1996 and the ramifications that will haunt them into their adult lives. Kessell’s Lottie was the older counterpart to Courtney Eaton’s survivor, who was sent to a hospital following her ordeal and dedicated herself to establishing a wellness commune.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kessell and Lisco addressed Lottie’s shocking death in season 3, episode 4. Lisco stated that her death was to inform audiences that there are consequences as a result of the characters’ actions. Kessell confirmed her death, and that answers are coming later this season:
Jonathan Lisco: It has absolutely nothing to do with how incredible and amazing Simone Kessell is because we could have worked with her forever. In the writers room, we have these big ideas. We put them on the board and we’re like, ‘No. Can’t happen. Must not happen.’ We’ll love working with this character and actor too much. Then as the stories evolve, it starts to tilt toward, ‘This has to happen. This will tell audiences there are true consequences to our characters’ actions and that things actually matter. If the bodies don’t drop in this manner, in a way that’s embedded and wrapped around story, then what are we doing? The whole idea of their survival is based on them having to make these incredibly difficult choices. They have to continue to make them, and in order to have that happen we do need things to occur that are pretty tragic. I hope you’ll see why this is a good story as you get to the end of the season.”
Simone Kessell: Yes, is my sad answer to that. Yes. Lottie is dead. It’s still [fresh]. You know when you play a character for so long, you sort of compare it to a canvas. You put so much paint on this canvas and you’re loving it and it’s evolving and there are so many layers to it; colors and light. And then suddenly it’s no longer. It took me a few months to digest that. I was of course upset. I guess I didn’t know if it was coming or not. But it’s that kind of show — it’s Yellowjackets! People do come and go, and I just feel grateful that I got to play Lottie for as long as I did. She’s such a mixed bag of Lottie-pops. In episode 10, the season finale, we see what happened to Lottie. I think that’s really clever. So after episode four, Misty [Christina Ricci] goes on to try and figure out how Lottie died. And then we find out in the finale how she died.
I knew going into the season. I was working on a show in Montreal, an Apple show called The Last Frontier, and I had a phone call with the writing team, the showrunners, and they let me know. I think the first question I asked them was, “Why? Why would you kill Lottie?” I was like, “What? Why?” Because she’s just such a different character and also, my first instinct was to think of Courtney Eaton playing young Lottie, and I thought, I hope this doesn’t take anything away from her brilliant work and, do we lose interest in that character? All the questions kind of came through. I still don’t know why they killed Lottie, but they did.
This is a developing story…
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Yellowjackets
7/10
- Release Date
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November 14, 2021
- Network
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Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime
- Showrunner
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Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco
- Directors
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Benjamin Semanoff, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Deepa Mehta, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Liz Garbus, Scott Winant, Eva Sørhaug, Jamie Travis
- Writers
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Liz Phang, Sarah L. Thompson, Ameni Rozsa