Yellowjackets is SHOWTIME’s smash hit series, following a high school girls’ soccer team that’s stranded in the wilderness for nearly two years after their plane crashes in the mountains of Ontario. Throughout the show, it flashes between the past and present, which includes the survivors of the crash trying to live normal lives years after their traumatic experience. Keep reading to meet the cast playing the younger versions of their adult counterparts.
Some of the younger cast members include Samantha Hanratty as teen Misty, Jasmin Savoy Brown as teen Taissa, Sophie Nélisse‘s as teen Shauna, Courtney Eaton as young Lottie, Liv Hewson as young Vanessa and Sophie Thatcher as Natalie. Though sometimes the spoilers come to them.
Sophie’s adult counterpart is Melanie Lynskey, an actress best known for her roles in Two and a Half Men, The Last of Us, Ever After and Coyote Ugly. While Sophie was getting prepared for her part, the actress explained she was nervous about playing a convincing younger version of Melanie.
“I remember when we did the table read, I’m sitting down and Melanie started speaking and saying her lines, and I’m just like, ‘You speak quite higher pitched than me,’ and I freaked out, and I was like, ‘There’s still time to fire me’,” she told Indiewire.
Turns out, Melanie was also having the same concerns over her voice. “We don’t really look that similar, but there is something energetically that works,” Melanie told the outlet, to which Sophie added, “A lot of people say we have sort of the same essence.”
Another actress who had some pretty large shoes to fill was that of Samantha, who plays the younger version of Christina Ricci‘s character, Misty.
“I started looking up pictures of her and looking at pictures of myself,” Samantha told The Hollywood Reporter. “I [put] them side to side to be like, ‘What is it that we have in common? And what is it that we don’t?’ “
Samantha also explained how differently she would have approached a traumatizing, Yellowjackets-esque situation if put in the position, and how differently it would be from her own character.
“I’m a very emotional person; I’m an empath,” she explained to the outlet. “I, as Samantha, would have been sobbing. I would have been having a mental breakdown. But Misty takes in things so differently. … I just want to hug her and tell her to go to therapy.”
Scroll through the gallery below to meet the younger cast of Yellowjackets.
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