‘Yellowjackets’ Actress Courtney Eaton Opens Up About Her Character’s Acceptance In The Show

Yellowjackets is a show about an unfortunate plane crash that lands a team of soccer players in a deep forest in Canada. The series revolves around the team fighting and struggling to survive. The show stars many brilliant actresses, such as Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Melani Lynskey. 

One of the greatest reveals of the first season was perhaps the final evolution of Lottie, who was revealed to be responsible for Travis’ death. Now, the character is all set to make her grand return, and actress Courtney Eaton, who plays the character, could not be more excited. Here’s the plot summary of the show:

In 1996, a team of New Jersey high school girls’ soccer players travel to Seattle for a national tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes deep in the wilderness and the surviving team members are left stranded for nineteen months. The series chronicles their attempts to stay alive while also dealing with their current lives in 2021.

Lottie’s Return

“It doesn’t come from not knowing her well, but I have a hard time explaining her,” said actress Courtney Eaton talking about her character. Certainly, there is an air of mysteriousness around Lottie that maybe even Eaton finds difficult to comprehend. 

Eaton has previously worked on projects like Mad Max: Fury Road and Gods of Egypt before Yellowjackets. The actress spoke about how signing up for a series was a challenge since that meant she would be occupied with regular filming for years to come.

“This was my first TV show, and the idea of signing on to something for six years really scared me,” she said. “But then I knew pretty early on that I wasn’t ever going to get bored with this character.”

The show is all set to return on the 24th of March. While it is a show carried by a huge cast of characters, Lottie is suddenly the center of attraction. The storyline for the next season is likely to revolve around her, and that was something that took the Australian actress by surprise.

“I remember getting that script and seeing that I closed out the season and sort of shitting myself, for lack of a better term,” she said. The character is supposedly going to receive a more detailed storyline and a polished current state. The current version of Lottie will be played by Simone Kessell. There will be glimpses into her tragic and mysterious past in order to link the past and the present, as is often done in works of fiction. 

Eaton has her own way of thinking about Lottie. She sees her as completely human and someone who doesn’t necessarily have any mental illness to make her the way she is. Instead, she’s a survivor dealing with things in an unusual way.

“I’ve decided that she doesn’t have a mental illness but that she’s never really trusted her own brain,” she said in an interview. “In dealing with the trauma of the crash, she’s just trying to latch onto whatever she can, which is often an energy that draws people to her even if she doesn’t know how to process it.” 

The show has previously been nominated for seven Emmy awards, and a third season has already been greenlit. The actress is clearly overwhelmed with the response the show has received. She is eternally grateful but also realizes that it’s going to take some time for the show’s success to really sink into her.

“I only started feeling like I could actually do this as a job in the last year or two,” she said. “It came with learning what I want for my life.” Eaton has a vision of who she wants to be. Maybe she’ll apply this vision to who her character should and can be in the upcoming seasons.