Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey opens up about Shauna's internal struggles regarding her and Adam's relationship, as well as episode 9's twist. Lynskey plays the present-day, adult counterpart to Sophie Nélisse's 1996 soccer-player-turned-plane-crash-survivor. Lynskey stars alongside Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci in the hit drama series.
Following her ordeal in the Canadian wilderness 25 years ago, Shauna Sadecki (Lynskey) is a housewife dissatisfied with her life; married to Jeff (Warren Kole), the boyfriend of her dead best friend Jackie (Ella Purnell), and struggling through a strained relationship with daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins). When their past catches up with her and the other surviving Yellowjackets team members, unresolved emotions come to light and Shauna starts an affair with the mechanic Adam (Peter Gadiot) after learning Jeff was unfaithful. When she discovers Adam knows about the Yellowjackets' time in the wilderness, Shauna stabs him, fearing he was blackmailing them, and the group comes together to dispose of his body.
With a dark past threatening to come to light and blood on her hands once more, Lynskey opens up about Shauna's mindset and her relationship with Adam. Speaking to E! Online alongside the rest of the cast about what season 2 may hold, Lynskey discusses how Shauna felt about her time with Adam. Revealing that she doubts herself despite any confidence she might have, her relationship with Adam brought out her more self-assured side. Despite this, when characters such as Callie question the relationship, Lynskey states that her doubts return to her and she loses what little confidence she had. The actor concludes by saying she enjoyed the tragic element of Shauna being responsible for the death of someone who could have been a perfect partner for her. Check out Lynskey's full breakdown of Shauna below:
The tragic thing about it to me is that Shauna doubts herself. She has all this confidence even though the world is telling her 'you're too old' or 'you're not pretty enough.' She's like, 'Actually, here's this young, interesting, handsome person that's interested in me, and I believe that he is.' She's really in this relationship and I don't think she has a lot of doubt until people come in and start saying, 'Well…' [...] Her daughter's like, 'He couldn't possibly be into you,' which opens an internal can of worms about her self-worth, which Shauna's never had a lot of. I kind of wanted the tragedy to be that she's killed someone who could potentially be a great love for her.
Shauna's self-doubt and unresolved trauma can be seen throughout Yellowjackets, with the show's creators revealing her guilt over Jackie's fate. Even before the crash, she had started an affair with Jeff while he dated Jackie and had become pregnant with his child, leading to her distancing herself before the crash. Following a series of escalations in the group, Jackie learned the truth and fell out with the other Yellowjackets, leading to her being forced out of the cabin they took shelter in. When the group tried to talk with Jackie in the morning, they discover her frozen corpse, with the captain having succumbed to a sudden snowfall in the night. Guilt over Jackie's fate can be seen in the series, with Shauna questioning whether things could have been different had Jeff stayed with her.
Shauna's past lingers over her character in Yellowjackets, keeping her trapped and unable to move beyond what she did. With Adam's death and season 2 introducing more survivors of the 1996 crash, it is guaranteed that both the audience and those close to Shauna will learn more of what she and her team members had to do to survive. While her troubles may have only just begun, perhaps resolving and coming to terms with her past could see Shauna become more self-assured in the future.
Source: E! Online
