Exclusive Interview
Jason Ritter Reacts to Wife Melanie Lynskey’s Meaty ‘Yellowjackets’ Scene With Hilary Swank
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 8 “A Normal, Boring Life.”]
Watching TV with your spouse hits a little differently for actor Jason Ritter, whose wife Melanie Lynskey plays the violent Shauna on the Showtime thriller Yellowjackets.
Ritter told us that he was chilled by the March 28 episode, in which Shauna tracked down her one-time lover Melissa (guest star Hilary Swank) and engaged in a wilderness-esque activity. Shauna took a bite out of Melissa’s arm and forced her to chomp on her own flesh.
“[Shauna is] very scary,” said Ritter, who’s currently playing a lawyer on Matlock. “I will say the end of Episode 8 with Hilary Swank in that fight, and [Shauna] is like, ‘eat it,’ it was hard for me not to have a little side-eye at the person sitting on the couch with me. It’s so great that she’s so different from Shauna in every single way!”
Kailey Schwerman / Paramount+ with SHOWTIME
Ritter and Lynskey are known for being very supportive of each other’s careers. They met in 2013 when they were working on the film The Big Ask, had a daughter in 2017, and married in 2018. Shortly after the wedding, Lynskey headed to Canada to start shooting Yellowjackets.
Ritter is enjoying the third season because “the storylines for both young [and adult] Shauna, it’s a nice mirror. Like, ‘Oh, right, some bad things happened in the forest. And Shauna, in particular, has had a rough go of it and has turned into a tough survivor. It’s so fascinating to see what Sophie Nélisse [who plays young Shauna] is doing and then see that adult Shauna has gotten to the point where, from the outside, it looks like, ‘Oh, a mom.’ To be able to see the inner anger and survival and rage that she can tap into.”
The proud husband goes on to rave about his wife, “It’s so fun to get to see her play this kind of part and show this other side of her. She’s such a wonderful actor. And it’s so exciting to see this wild, crazy character. She’s so wounded, and there’s these flashes that she has of shame and guilt and that whole thing [Shauna says] to Hilary Swank about, ‘You don’t get to have a normal family if I can’t have a normal one.’ Even though from the outside it looks like it, she [Shauna] feels like an outsider alien in her own family. The writing is so beautiful. Everybody is just on fire this season.”
The Yellowjackets finale drops April 11, and Matlock wraps its successful first season on April 17. Now the couple just needs to start planning how to appear on each other’s shows. Ritter has called Lynskey dropping in on the law drama “inevitable” but if you can’t wait for that, they’ll both guest star on Peacock detective drama Poker Face this summer.
Yellowjackets, Fridays, Paramount+ With Showtime, Sundays, 8/7c, Showtime
