Collider Ladies Night & Collider Forces

Yellowjackets features some of the very best ensemble casting across the board, but there’s no denying we got an extra special duo in Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose. At the start of the Showtime and Paramount+ series, Van Palmer was not meant to make it out of the wilderness alive. However, thanks to Hewson’s screen presence and creative spark, it became abundantly clear that they deserved more time to shine. Not only did the showrunners shift gears and have Van survive the wolf attack in Season 1, Episode 7, but at the start of Season 2, they revealed that Van makes it home from wilderness with the introduction of Ambrose’s present-day version of the character. From that point on, we’ve enjoyed a breathtaking level of connectivity between the two actors.

However, as of Season 3, Episode 9, “How the Story Ends,” the time of Van Palmer being a dual role has ended. The character doesn’t succumb to her cancer diagnosis, but rather, is stabbed by Hilary Swank’s present-day Melissa. It’s a crushing end for a fan-favorite character, one that Ambrose admits, doesn’t offer closure, but because it was never meant to. However, Ambrose herself has found peace in the feeling that she “was just handing [Van] back to Liv.”

With all of Yellowjackets Season 3 available to stream on Paramount+, and with the show’s Emmy campaign picking up steam, I got the opportunity to welcome Ambrose to Collider Ladies Night. During our 40-minute chat, we revisited some pivotal moments of her career, many of which pointed toward a deep appreciation of the rehearsal process. And, it turns out, that love of rehearsing is what helped her and Swank figure out how to play Van’s death and deliver a scene that feels “crackling and real and exciting and weird.”

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Yellowjackets has a phenomenal team at the helm. Showrunners Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson and Jonathan Lisco do a top-tier job steering the ship. However, one thing that’s been apparent since the very beginning is how much their ensemble cares about their characters. It’s a level of passion, dedication and collaboration that undoubtedly bolsters their presence in the show and their impact on the narrative. A prime example of that? How Liv Hewson changed the game for their character, Van Palmer.

In May 2023, Hewson became the very first guest on Collider Forces, a show they inspired. Collider Forces is a Collider Ladies Night spin-off series designed to use a similar style of conversation to highlight even more need-to-know voices in this industry, ones that are changing it for the better. Hewson’s inspired significant change in recent years. Change for themself, change for non-binary representation in Hollywood, and also a significant change to the Yellowjackets narrative.

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Sophie Nélisse’s Shauna Shipman has been through quite a bit since crashing in the wilderness at the start of Yellowjackets, and in Season 3, all of that heartbreak, fear, and anger comes to a head in a very dangerous way for everyone around her. After losing Jackie (Ella Purnell) and her baby, Shauna is consumed with rage, and discovers she has a taste for power, the dangers of the wilderness, and the blood-soaked thrills it offers. That results in her consistently hurting other characters to get what she wants.

Just to name a few, she has it out for Mari (Alexa Barajas) all season, she essentially bullies the other Yellowjackets into voting Coach Scott (Steven Krueger) guilty of burning down the cabin, and in one of the most crushing scenes of the season, she shatters Melissa’s (Jenna Burgess) heart, putting an end to the ShaunaHat romance. It’s cruel and often unforgivable behavior, however, Nélisse insists that she’s still rooting for Shauna, and her reasoning ties to an essential building block of a good villain figure. “You see all of her roots and all of the reasons that led her to the person that she is in the third season.” She added, “I wouldn't say that everything that she's done is obviously forgivable, but I understand where it all stems from.”

During her visit to Collider Ladies Night, Nélisse weighed in on the fan reaction to Shauna’s behavior in Yellowjackets Season 3, shared her devastating take on the demise of ShaunaHat, and also revealed what 90s Shauna would think of who Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is in the present day.

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Courtney Eaton’s Lottie Matthews continues to be one of the most enigmatic characters in the Yellowjackets ensemble, making her one of the most exciting to track. And while it’s nearly impossible to explain away all of Lottie’s choices and actions, especially in Season 3, the character is still shockingly grounded courtesy of the fact that Eaton understands her and has successfully established an anchor for the character via her own intuition and instincts as an actor.

As Eaton noted during her first Collider Ladies Night appearance for Yellowjackets Season 2, “Lottie does everything from the best place. She's trying to give her heart to everyone. It might not come across in the right way sometimes, but she's always well intentioned.” Does that thinking still apply when it comes to axe murder, ruining the group’s chance of recuse, pushing Travis (Kevin Alves) to the brink, and then some in Season 3? Eaton does, indeed, hold tight to that mentality. “[Lottie] knows that the best version of herself is once she's connected [to the wilderness] and that can help the group.”

During her second go-around on Collider Ladies Night, Eaton digs into how that thinking influenced Lottie's choices this season, offers her thoughts on Lottie possibly being the one who burned down the cabin, confirms how far Lottie walked over the pit during that scene with Travis, reveals if Lottie was really trying to help Mari during the hunt, and so much more!

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[Editor's Note: We experienced some technical difficulties with the audio of this episode. Our apologies, and thank you for your understanding!]

Meghann Fahy’s been thriving on screen for quite some time now. She was in over 80 episodes of One Life to Live as Hannah O’Connor and starred in the hit Freeform series The Bold Type which ran for five seasons. But, there’s no denying that The White Lotus was a different kind of game-changer. Not only did Mike White’s HBO series continue to be a pop culture sensation in its second season, but the quality of the new episodes earned nine members of the ensemble Emmy nominations, including Fahy.

Since that Emmy nomination? Fahy’s downright soaring. She had a role in the 2024 genre mash-up gem Your Monster starring a Collider Ladies Night favorite, Melissa Barrera. She was in The Perfect Couple with Nicole Kidman, she was in Rebuilding with Josh O’Connor which earned high praise at Sundance, and is also in Molly Smith Metzler’s highly anticipated Netflix series Sirens with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock. All very exciting achievements, but there’s something extra special about the movie Fahy has hitting theaters on April 11. Christopher Landon’s Drop marks the very first time Fahy is #1 on the call sheet for a feature film.

She headlines as Violent, a widowed mother reluctantly going on her first date in years. While dining in an upscale restaurant with her dating app match, Brandon Sklenar’s Henry, Violet starts getting a string of unusual and alarming anonymous drops to her phone. Is it her date? Is it another diner? Or perhaps it’s an employee at the restaurant. Violet doesn’t know and she’ll have to figure it out on her own because the assailant is watching and they insist she tell no one - or else.

Drop rocks a sharp script and the much-needed skilled mind and eye to execute it in Landon, but the success of the film heavily depends on Fahy’s ability to deftly navigate the production challenges that come with such a concept while also ensuring the viewer can feel the threat Violet’s under, and she excels tackling both - big time. While celebrating Drop’s World Premiere screening at SXSW, Fahy visited the Collider Media Studio at the Cinema Center for a Collider Ladies Night interview to go back to the beginning and recap her journey to landing at the top of the call sheet.

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