Jasmin Savoy Brown was very close to passing on Yellowjackets, Showtime’s new hit drama. “I hadn’t had auditions in months,” an extremely cozy Brown says from the comfort of her couch during a Zoom call. “I finally leave for vacation, I’m two days into it, and then I’m told: ‘You have an audition.’ I think my agent had to literally convince me to come back, because I was so pissed.” Fortunately, the 27-year-old Oregon native took the audition and ultimately won the role of headstrong teenager Taissa Turner (played as an adult by Tawny Cypress), which she plays with intensity and concealed vulnerability.
Yellowjackets shifts between 1996 and the present to tell the story of a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the Canadian wilderness following a plane crash, and the harrowing events the survivors endure during a nearly two-year ordeal . The mystery—what happened to certain characters, which ones may have been sacrificed and eaten, and who’s blackmailing the survivors in the present—is the hook, but Yellowjackets is about human behavior. It’s been called Lord of the Flies meets Mean Girls and Heathers, and like all three, it peers under the hood to examine how people function in extreme circumstances. Brown’s version of Taissa displays a willingness to resort to extremes when she believes she’s right, even before the crash. Some of her actions are unpopular, but as Brown points out, a significant part of Taissa’s hard exterior comes from trying to cope with being a queer, biracial teenager growing up during the ‘90s. On top of that, assertive Black women are subject to harsh criticism for standing their ground, especially when they’re right.
Brown is also part of another gory offering: the latest installation of Scream, which opens in theaters today. Ahead of its premiere and the Yellowjackets season finale this weekend, Brown spoke to GQ about what makes Taissa tick, the many Yellowjackets fan theories, and joining the Scream universe.
What drew you to the character of Taissa? She can be challenging at times, but it’s often necessary. She makes tough decisions that other characters can’t make.
It’s so funny when everyone says she’s “tough,” or when a lot of people say she’s unlikable, because I never saw that. I think she’s always right and that’s probably why I’m playing her. From the get, even with breaking Allie’s leg, I really don’t think that was on purpose. I genuinely think she was trying to play rough to teach her to step up and just hit her at the wrong angle. So I have nothing but love for Taissa. I think she needs to do a sleep help program, but I have nothing bad to say about her.
Some of the chaos that becomes necessary for everyone’s survival in the wilderness is there before they get stranded. How do you find the balance between playing her as ruthless, but also vulnerable, as we see in her scenes with Van?
I feel like Taissa’s vulnerability, at least in the woods, only comes out around Van—and towards the end, it only comes out around Shauna. Taissa very much seems to be a one-person, intimacy-only type of person. For whatever reason, she has to keep this, “I’ve got it together” facade going. I think her ability to convince everyone else she’s OK allows her to trick herself into thinking she’s OK, and she thinks that if people see her as soft or vulnerable, then that means they’ll see her as weak, which is why she only lets Van see that side of her. And then later on, Shauna—which turns into a beautiful relationship. By the end of the first season, I actually think their relationship is my favorite.
How much of her edge comes from being a young, queer, Black woman in 1996 New Jersey?
A lot, and I think it’s also Tai being a person of mixed race. I don’t know much about Jersey in the ‘90s, but I know a lot about Oregon in the ‘90s and it’s not a cute place to be Black, whether you have two Black parents or one Black parent and one white parent. So I think that totally adds to her stubbornness, her iron will, her survival mechanism, and then you add being queer on top of that. She definitely wasn’t out before the crash, but she has so much going against her that makes her beautiful and makes her who she is that society wasn’t ready to accept, so I’m sure that’s part of why she’s so intense. Because I think it could manifest as intensity or it can manifest in other ways like having the drive she has, but it can hurt you when you don’t take time to process things, and we see that in her sleepwalking.
What did you and Tawny Cypress talk about when you discussed who the character is and who she ultimately became?
Tawny basically looked at me, because she was like, “Whatever choices you make inform who my version of Taissa becomes.” I’m basically her backstory. So she was like, “Whatever you decide, let me know.” We talked about Taissa’s drive and her passion. We didn’t really have to talk much about her physicality because we both approached her the same way, physically. But we talked about the little things, like how she pronounces “either.” And we did get together in a park across from where we both lived in Vancouver to kind of choreograph how Taissa eats dirt because we wanted that to match up.
I read that you two wanted to stay in sync with specific regard to eating the dirt. Did you do anything else to stay consistent beyond that?
We would check in here and there, but we didn’t really need to. We just had the exact same understanding of the character, and I think there was this feeling that if we talked about it and choreographed it too much, then it would look staged versus trusting the filmmakers and casting to have chosen people with the same essence. Because Tawny and I really do have the same essence. I actually just found these pictures of us from when I went and visited her in Jersey after we wrapped, and her husband took three of us back to back, and it’s crazy: We’re looking in each other’s eyes and we’re doing the exact same movements in these pictures at the exact same time. And it wasn’t planned at all.
I think it’s natural for viewers to wonder how much the experience in the wilderness shapes who these women become. But a lot of who they become is based on who they already are prior to the crash. How much of the Taissa we see later in life was already there when she boarded that plane?
I think almost all of it. Each piece of her, even the negative pieces, were just exaggerated due to the trauma of the crash. So, to be specific, that would be her drive, her workaholism, and her charming nature—which I think is a double-edged sword. I talk a lot about the Enneagram and Taissa is an achiever with helper wings. She’s addicted to work and charms the pants off of people, and that’s such a good quality to have, but it can hurt you when you don’t know how to turn it off, and I think the trauma of the crash just ignited all the negative sides of these women and brought them out even more than they would’ve been present otherwise.
Yellowjackets is really two shows in one. What did the younger cast do to bond, seeing as how you’re filming this one show that takes place in the past, and you were filming on location in Vancouver and had to form certain relationship dynamics for the sake of your characters?
We spent a lot of time together. There was a lot of karaoke; Sophie Thatcher is the karaoke queen. Steven Krueger, who plays coach Ben Scott, got a penthouse, so we spent a lot of time at his place up on his roof playing ping pong and beer pong—well, more like playing white claw pong. A lot of day trips to the beach, a lot of movie nights, and just shooting the shit.
A lot of you were born around the time the show begins. Did you do anything collectively—or even you, individually—to absorb the pop culture of the moment and feel like teenagers during the mid-90s?
A lot of us love music, so we exchanged some playlists and listened to ‘90s music. We listened to Juliette Lewis’s music and I’m sure we watched some ‘90s films that I can’t think of off the top of my head, but it was mostly about music for this group of people.
Taissa’s decision to cut her hair after the crash is a big personal moment. What did that mean for her?
I love that scene. That was my idea; I pitched that to the writers on day one of filming. Taissa’s hair is a huge part of her identity and prior to cutting it, I wanted it to be clear that she wraps her hair every night. She wraps her hair when she goes on her midnight rendezvous with Van. She keeps with her haircare routine the whole time, for months, until she decides it’s time to go on this journey. I think in her conscious mind, cutting it off was simply about ease and removing excess: “If we’re going on this journey, I don’t need to be worried about my hair, I need to be worried about survival.” But subconsciously, it was saying goodbye to her old self and accepting that these were the circumstances they were in. Who she was before no longer existed, so it was shedding that piece of her identity. There are so many other layers to it, but I think that’s what it was at the core.
I feel like Taissa and Akilah don’t interact that much. And as two of less than a handful of young Black women who are part of the team who are then stranded in the wilderness together, do you think they should have a stronger relationship and is that something you hope is explored in the future?
I really hope so and I think you’re absolutely right, because that’s something I want a lot more of. That’s part of why the scene on the beach where Taissa’s doing Akilah’s hair and she says, “I guess you’re not that much of a bitch” is so important to me. But that’s pretty much all that we got and it’s not accurate to what the situation would be [laughs].
Yellowjackets compels its audience to try and solve the show’s many mysteries. Do you follow the Reddit theories?
I love the Reddit community! The Yellowjackets Reddit community is so sick.
I’ve seen you say that everyone’s theories are wrong, but are you at least entertained by the ideas you see?
Yes, there are a few that I want to tell you, but I can’t because then they’ll know they’re wrong. We are not going to get answers to every question at the end of episode 10. We’ll get some, but not all. But then there are some theories I see where I’m like, “Shit, maybe that’s right.” These people are so smart.
Has the cast been informed about where things are headed in season two?
No, we know nothing, and that’s not a lie. I know nothing and it is so annoying [laughs].
I’ve been waiting for the incident that causes the split within the group, because we’ve felt it coming for a while now. How close are we to seeing that?
I think we’re really, really close—at least to the beginning of the divide. Now, with these showrunners, who the hell knows. But I think we’re on the cusp of the divide.
In my eyes, Yellowjackets is about trauma, the hierarchies that exist at every layer of society, and how extreme circumstances can magnify issues that were already present and upend existing dynamics. In your opinion, what is Yellowjackets about at its core, and what should people take away from this show, aside from being slightly appalled at times?
I think, at its core, Yellowjackets is about women, society, humanity, and the core of human beings. There’s so much at the core of human beings and women, specifically, and it’s savagery, survival, love, and a desperate need for community. Because the same things that happen in the woods with literal guns, knives, and ritual sacrifices are repeated when these women are in their 40s, just with PTA meetings and mom vans. But they want the same things: support, safety, community, love, and to feel alive. So I don’t know if Yellowjackets answers questions, but it sure asks them and gives us a mirror to look into.
The point where I saw the man with no eyes, then Taissa’s blackouts, and then the malevolent side to Lottie’s apparent clairvoyance is where I realized, “Oh, so we’re going there. This is that type of show.” What was your reaction to finding out that Yellowjackets has this dark element to it, beyond the cannibalism that’s been suggested?
Truthfully, I think a lot of us were a little worried, like: “Where is this going?” Because we didn’t know. I didn’t know it was going to be genre bending in so many ways, and I think it’s very rare for a show to commit to genre bending so much and do it well. I’ve been lucky that I’ve now been a part of two shows that did a really good job of that. So at first I was nervous, but as we kept getting scripts and kept filming, I felt better and better about it. And then obviously now, as it’s coming together, they’ve done an excellent job and I’m excited to see the other directions it takes.
You’re referencing The Leftovers, another show that also often took shocking directions. Can you tell me a little about what you took away from that experience as a performer?
This is a story that I’ve never told. The first scene that I shot was the choir scene, where Evie’s singing with her friends and Mimi Leder is directing this episode. It was my first day on the set of my first big job, I knew nothing about the character and where she was going, but something in my gut told me that she didn’t like choir and thought it was a joke. And so every take, I’d pretend to be into it, then stop being into it. Mimi kept saying, “No, you love choir. I need you to give me a take where you love choir the whole time.” But I knew that if I gave them that take, they’d use it, so I didn’t.
I didn’t think she liked me, but we eventually came back around, because when you cut to episode nine, when you find that Evie and her friends are in the trailer and that they’d run away, Damon [Lindelof] was on set that day and he came up to me and said, “I want you to know, it was when I was watching that scene of you in the choir that I realized what happened to the girls and what happened the rest of the season.” So that was a lesson for me in terms of trusting my gut, because had I not, the literal rest of the season would have looked differently. As an actor and as an artist, that experience taught me that there are risks worth taking. And in the end, Mimi and I are cool now, but it was really scary in the moment taking such a risk knowing that this iconic director is giving me a note, I’m not taking it, and thinking that I was never going to work again. I’m not telling people not to take notes, but I’m also telling you to trust your gut.
What can you tell me about your role in Scream?
So I play Mindy Meeks-Martin. She’s the niece of Randy Meeks, which is pretty cool. She is a lot like him: She’s the horror film buff of her film group who knows the rules and she happens to be a queer woman of color, which is pretty darn cool. It’s cool to get to play the first out queer character in the Scream universe, but it’s also cool because Mindy’s queerness is not a big deal. She just happens to be queer, but that’s not her personality and that’s a testament to the filmmakers, the writers, and the producers. So I’m very grateful I got to bring her to life.
Did you go back and watch the previous movies to prepare for the role?
No, I hadn’t seen the Scream movies until I was shooting this one. I missed the train, so once I booked the job, I went back and watched them once and that’s it. I didn’t want to overthink it. I thought that if I studied them, I might mess up the magic that was happening, so I just watched them once and let it happen.