Yellowjackets Showrunner Says Some Scenes in the Series Were Improv

Yellowjackets showrunners Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, and Jonathan Lisco have impressively made an impact on the viewers. Since Yellowjackets started, more and more people are getting hooked on the series. While the trio carefully patched each storyline, they revealed that some of these plots came along the way. In addition, the showrunners discussed the original plans for Van and adding new Yellowjackets.

As previously reported, Van wasn’t supposed to survive season one. Lyle revealed that they had plenty of opportunity to kill off Van, but each time, she rose above her demise; she told Collider,

“I think what’s interesting is that it’s not that she was ever definitely meant to die, it’s just that the opportunity for her death kept coming up, and then we kept writing away from it. And I think part of that is very much a credit to Liv because they are phenomenal. And even in the pilot itself, Van was not given a particularly big part and Liv found some great moments.”

Lyle also said that some of the scenes in the series were not part of the script. Since Liv Hewson brilliantly found a way to humanize Van, they found reasons to keep her. She said,

“Some of them were scripted, but some of them are improvved. I think one of my favorite things that Van does in the pilot, and this was all Liv, as Jackie’s saying, ‘Yellowjackets with me,’ and is about to give them a talking to, Liv decided to just go back and get a little bit more beer and we were like, that is such an incredible Van character moment. The more fun these characters are, the harder it is to part with them. The one who was legitimately going to die in the pilot from our conception and our pitch was Laura Lee, and Jane [Widdop] brought so much humanity to that part that we were like, ‘Okay, well, we have to kill somebody at some point.’ [Laughs]”

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Bart Nickerson on Incorporating New Yellowjackets

Aside from keeping Van, the showrunners also decided to incorporate new characters into the show as additional Yellowjackets. Nickerson revealed that they always knew that there would be more characters coming. She said,

“I think that part of it is, you know, a television is not a novel or a feature. You don’t have the entire plan, for better and for worse. I’m sure that this is an extreme statement that I will back away from ten minutes after this interview is over, but leaning into the realities of the medium that you’re working in, whether it’s a limit or an expansiveness of it, I think is almost always the right answer. And so just to acknowledge that it’s like, ‘Okay, we can’t cast all of these people in two timelines right from day one. That’s just not financially viable.’ But then doing it in a way that’s not trying to pull a fast one, that is trying to be as non-bumpy as possible, but also says, ‘No, no, no. We kind of know we’re not getting one by you,’ just seems to be the best way to proceed.”