Melanie Lynskey was just as freaked out having to bite Hilary Swank‘s flesh as Yellowjackets fans were to watch it go down.
“With the stunt, yes it was terrible,” Lynskey, 47, exclusively told Us Weekly while attending the Poker Face panel at the Paley Center Library on Saturday, March 29. “I was like, ‘I’m going to break two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank!’ I was afraid I was going to break her arm or something like that.”
Lynskey went on to praise Swank, 50, for being such a good sport on set. “I was grateful that she was willing to really go for it,” she added. “It was fun. It was a really good experience.”
The Showtime series, which premiered in 2021, follows a high school girls soccer team that ends up stranded in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash. The survivors don’t return home for 19 months, during which time they are driven to cannibalism in order to survive.
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While Yellowjackets has previously kept the flesh-eating scenes entirely to flashbacks, season 3 shook things up by venturing into the taboo subject during the present day timeline. Lynskey’s Shauna specifically was the one to return to their roots when she confronted adult Melissa (Swank) about faking her death.
The tense conversation on the Thursday, March 27, episode took a turn when adult Shauna lunged at Melissa and bit off a small piece of her arm. Shauna forced Melissa to eat it, which marked the fourth time there was blatant cannibalism shown on screen.
Creator Ashley Lyle spoke about venturing into that territory, telling IndieWire in 2023, “For us, it’s never been about if [there will be] cannibalism. It has always been why and how, and then what happens after that. It sounds like a weird thing to say, but you’ve got to earn cannibalism.”
Fellow showrunner Jonathan Lisco called the reveal a “muscular, bold move” that was meant to shock and surprise the audience.
“Once flesh has been tasted, it’s a slippery slope,” he noted at the time. “When they wake up with the Jackie hangover, the next episode, are they so filled with guilt and shame that they actually would do anything not to do it again?”
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Lisco continued: “We’re going to make the choices that they make much more ambiguous and much more morally fraught than just the eating of a person to survive.”
In addition to taking risks on Yellowjackets, Lynskey has made appearances on other shows including Peacock’s Poker Face. While Lynskey didn’t share scenes with star Natasha Lyonne and fellow guest star Clea DuVall, it still felt like a reunion for the But I’m a Cheerleader cast.
“Although I didn’t get to work with either of them in my episode, it’s fun to all be here today and doing this together,” Lynskey told Us. “I was just with John Cho [in my episode] but it’s very funny!”
With reporting by Nicole Brajer